The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence

Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, before business begins, I take the opportunity to inform the House that I am to attend a meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday, 16th December, when the House will sit. Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

Food Safety Standards and Devolution

Lord Tebbit: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Further to the reply by the Baroness Hayman on 21st October that "Because of issues of food safety and food standards, the decision has been taken that it is sensible not to have different regimes in different countries and for us to act in a concerted, United Kingdom fashion" (Official Report, col. 1292), why they granted powers to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly to have different regimes concerning food safety and food standards in Scotland and Wales from those in England.

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, when it passed the Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act in 1998, Parliament decided that responsibility for food safety and standards should be devolved to Scotland and Wales. That means that Scotland and Wales have the competence to make different legislation on those matters if they wish. Equally, they may decide that it is sensible to proceed on a consistent basis, as in the setting up of the Food Standards Agency where it was decided to have one body for England, Scotland and Wales.

Lord Tebbit: My Lords, is the Minister aware that that was not the case? What happened was that the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly took a decision contrary to that of this Parliament and of Her Majesty's Government. The Government then ran along behind saying that it would be unreasonable to have a different regime in the different parts of the United Kingdom. Why give the powers unless it was intended that they should be used to implement different regimes in different parts of the kingdom?

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord refers to the beef on the bone ban. I have examined the slightly inelegant syntax I used in answering the question to which he has drawn attention. I was drawing the analogy with the Food Standards Agency. However, I believe that the noble Lord's basic point is one in which he assumes a difference arising from devolution. In fact, that difference does not exist. It was always the responsibility of the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales to take policy decisions in the area of food safety. It was possible to have different legislative regimes before devolution. The noble Lord laughs, but that is true and on occasion it happened. Just because the powers are there does not mean that it will be sensible in every circumstance to exercise them.

Lord Hughes of Woodside: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, who is normally extremely reasonable and rational, on this occasion is being unreasonable and irrational? It is perfectly possible for the Parliament of Westminster, the Parliament of Scotland and the Assembly of Wales on some occasions to agree to have the same policy but on other occasions to agree to differ, in which case one says simply, "Vive la difference"?

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I agree with at least one half of my noble friend's intervention. I certainly accept that it is possible to have the legislative ability to take a different view on matters and it may be absolutely right for a devolved administration to have that ability. Equally, it may be in the interests of consumers and, indeed, producers, as I believe it was in the case of the beef on the bone ban, to take a consistent policy across the United Kingdom.

Lord Molyneaux of Killead: My Lords, will the noble Baroness clarify the statement in her initial reply that certain powers were devolved if the devolved institutions wanted to use them? Surely, once devolution takes place, there is a clear cut-off of Westminster's power to legislate or to make decisions. The power is either devolved or it is not.

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, indeed, the power is either devolved or it is not. The decision whether, for instance, to be part of a food standards agency is within the competence of the devolved authority. I understand that the Northern Ireland Executive has not considered food safety since devolution on 2nd December but that it will do so soon with regard to its own policy on the Food Standards Agency.

Lord Boardman: My Lords, does the noble Baroness mean by that that someone who is acting perfectly legally on this side of the Border can, on crossing the Border, find that the devolved power has made them an illegal person or institution?

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, it depends on whether or not the noble Lord is referring to powers devolved since devolution. I draw the analogy which is perhaps most helpful to the House. There is a different regime regarding unpasteurised milk north and south of the Scottish Border. As the Secretary of State for Scotland decided, before devolution it was possible to take a different view about the retail sale of unpasteurised milk north and south of the Border. Indeed, an activity which under certain circumstances is legal in terms of food safety south of the Border is not legal north of the Border. Equally, if the devolved authorities chose to have different legislation on food safety, it would, indeed, be possible for something to be legal in one part of the United Kingdom and not legal in another. It was exactly because of the difficulties that that would impose, I suggest, on the beef industry and for consumers that we took time to see whether we could come to a United Kingdom view on beef on the bone, which I am glad to say we were able to do.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, does the Minister agree that Her Majesty's Government say that issues of food safety and food standards are based on sound scientific advice? If that is so, can she explain what other factors--including political factors--affect different decisions made in different parts of the United Kingdom?

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, with respect to the noble Countess, it is not for me to explain the political thinking that may take place in a devolved authority that decides to take a different view on an issue of food safety. As we all know, scientists are not always unanimous in their advice. Policy makers not only have a responsibility to make their decisions based on scientific advice; they must also have regard to the risks and the risks that it is right for consumers to take when making an informed choice.

Earl Russell: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, as England and Scotland have always had separate laws, the situation described by the noble Lord, Lord Boardman--a matter made illegal on one side of the Border and not on the other--has been true ever since the union of the crowns in 1603 without causing much trouble?

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I leave such historical judgments to the noble Earl. He is absolutely right. I was using a specific example on food safety to illustrate that post-devolution there has not been some enormous constitutional innovation. Of course, the point covers a much broader spectrum of legislation.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, is it not absolutely clear from the trouble with the beef on the bone ban that where all three--now all four--governments have a common problem to which there is a common solution, they should adopt that solution?

Baroness Hayman: Yes, my Lords.

Lord Tebbit: My Lords, will the Minister state what possible harm could have come from--

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, we are into the ninth minute on this Question.

The Prime Minister's Office: Accommodation

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What plans they have to provide adequate accommodation for the Prime Minister's official staff.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the Government have no plans to change the current accommodation arrangements for the Prime Minister's Office.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for that Answer. I can hink of no one more skilled or better suited to present it. Is it true that the rather bigger staff that the Prime Minister is said to require today is bursting out of No. 10 and looking for better, bigger and newer accommodation? If that is true, why is so much money being spent on what I may call "old No. 10"? Perhaps the noble and learned Lord, with candour, can tell the House whether that pressure is due to the need to accommodate a large image-making staff, which is the busiest and most successful department in the Government?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the Prime Minister's staff are not bursting out of No. 10. There are no plans to move the staff or to increase the size of the accommodation. On the expenditure referred to, first, the state rooms have been improved for the first time in 10 years, and, secondly, the top floor of No. 10 Downing Street has been brought back into commission as offices following a terrorist attack that occurred some years previously. The number of staff has been increased, as the Labour Party made it clear before coming into office that it would have a strong centre, which it has.

Lord Lipsey: My Lords, does my noble and learned friend agree that it is amazing, given the range of responsibilities of a modern Prime Minister, not that the number of staff at No. 10 is so big, but that it is so small?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I agree with much of what my noble friend says. The size of the staff is appropriate to the responsibilities.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, will not the Prime Minister's staff require more accommodation in order to employ more people to look after the Scottish Executive, which last week managed to get itself into a total shambles resulting in Mr Donald Dewar sacking his chief adviser, despite the desires of Downing Street to keep him? If more staff are needed, can the Minister give the House an absolute assurance that the Secretary of State for Scotland will not be evicted and that Dover House will not be taken over by the Prime Minister?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, first, it is absolutely clear that the Prime Minister will stay in No. 10 Downing Street. Secondly, I note the noble Lord's reference to "shambles". I wonder how the Conservative Party feels at the moment about their choice for London mayor. As I understand the position, the No. 1 candidate dropped out and No. 2 has been barred despite the fact that he was allowed in the race the first time round. But perhaps that is straying too far from the Question.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, obviously there is a misunderstanding in relation to that. Thirdly, I do not believe that the Question has anything to do with Scotland.

Earl Russell: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House the cost of the Prime Minister's official staff? How does that cost compare with the cost for the last year of John Major's prime ministership and how are those costs divided between public funds, party funds and the Prime Minister's private funds?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I cannot give the House the precise costs. The difference in terms of the number of staff is that as at 1st April 1997, the number of staff in No. 10 was 130. The current figure is 199. However, I shall write to the noble Earl about the costs.

Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether a nanny would be classified as part of the Prime Minister's official staff? If so, will extra accommodation be required for him or her?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I should have thought that the question about a nanny would be entirely a matter for the Prime Minister's private arrangements.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, if the number of people in the Prime Minister's staff increases by 50 per cent, can the Minister explain how they are not over-crowded? Indeed, were they all floating around like ducks in a bath beforehand?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I should have thought that the description of the previous government's staff at No. 10 as "floating ... ducks in a bath" might be an appropriate portrayal of what was going on before. However, I cannot tell. The noble Earl is better placed than I to judge that. As far as concerns the present position, the top floor has been brought into commission as offices. Modern methods of space planning are used and there is no difficulty.

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, given the Prime Minister's overall responsibility for the Civil Service, would the Minister like to congratulate the Civil Service College on its part in securing the contract to train civil servants of the European Union? Given the size of that task, does the Minister agree that No. 10 Downing Street is likely to be denuded of civil servants for some time to come?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Yes, my Lords. I should like to join the noble Baroness in congratulating the Civil Service College on its training generally and on securing the contract to which she referred.

Phthalate Plasticisers

Lord Taverne: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What steps they are taking to revoke the European Commission's ban on phthalate plasticisers.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, at a meeting on 1st December of the Emergencies Committee, established under the General Product Safety Directive, the committee unanimously adopted the Commission's proposal to introduce an emergency ban on phthalates in toys intended to be mouthed by children under three years of age. The Department of Trade and Industry will be implementing the measure through administrative measures, which monitor the voluntary undertakings given by United Kingdom industry that products covered by the measure have been removed from the UK market.

Lord Taverne: My Lords, do the Government accept that there is no scientific basis for this ban and that, if the conclusions drawn from tests of chemicals in this case were to be more widely applied, we would have to ban orange juice, marmalade, broccoli and a host of other foodstuffs? Will the Government resist an extension of the ban to medical products, like gloves, syringes and tubing, which would have significant health effects? Finally, does not the imposition of this ban show the need to counter the enormous influence of pressure groups like Greenpeace, which are no respecters of scientific evidence and are more concerned with scare headlines to increase their membership than they are with the protection of health or the environment?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, there are two kinds of phthalate plasticisers which could be used in the toy industry. One is DEHP, which has not been used in Britain for 10 years. It is certainly true that that could be dangerous if mouthed and, to that extent, the noble Lord is not correct in his scientific analysis. The second is DINP, which would be dangerous only if it were chewed for a very long time; for example, as a child's dummy. However, no phthalates are used in the production of dummies, teethers or teething rings. Therefore, for the sake of peace and quiet, we decided that it was better to go along with the Union, although the directive does not affect our industry.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, can the noble Lord give the House the treaty base under which this absurd piece of nonsense is being taken? Can he also say whether the United Kingdom has the ability to stop it? Alternatively, are we, as usual, outvoted by our good partners in Europe?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, the basis for this ban is the General Product Safety Directive. We did not seek to stop it; we agreed with the ban and allowed it to go forward.

Lord Boardman: My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the United Kingdom. However, bearing in mind the exchanges which took place during the previous Question today, one wonders whether Scotland, for example, has the authority to decide not to adopt this particular regulation. Indeed, could Scotland take a completely different attitude towards the ban?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I do not have an answer to that question, which would not have occurred if the previous Question had not arisen. My immediate judgment is to say that matters of implementation of European Commission directives would be reserved matters, even though food safety is a devolved matter. Most food law is determined at European Union level. Devolved authorities have to work within the harmonised framework. UK policy will have to reflect a consistent line.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is not the case that some phthalates have the potential of being oestrogen mimics? In view of the fact that fish have been found to be of both sexes, or to be changing their sexes, is it not important for us to protect our children? Surely we must always bear this in mind.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, my Lords. I entirely agree with the noble Countess that it is important for us to protect our children. Indeed, the toy industry in this country also agrees. That is why there have been no DINP phthalates--in fact, no phthalates--used in the production of dummies, teethers and teething rings for a very long time.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, will the noble Lord be kind enough to tell us what we are talking about?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, a widely used plastic material is PVC--polyvinyl chloride--of which I am sure the noble Earl will have heard. When it is desirable for it to be softened so that it can be used for toys or, as I said, for dummies, then a plasticiser is used; namely, a phthalate. That is what the Question addresses.
	Perhaps I may at this point give the noble Countess, Lady Mar, a further answer to her question. I am advised that DINP has no oestrogenic effect.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I must refer back to the Minister's earlier reply to me because he did not answer my question. Is this piece of legislation taken under qualified majority voting or under unanimity in Brussels; in other words, if we wanted to resist it, could we do so or would we be outvoted?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is a hypothetical question in this case. However, I will write to the noble Lord on the subject.

Bahrain: Human Rights and Democracy

Lord Avebury: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they raised human rights and democracy with the Amir of Bahrain during his visit to Britain.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary raised human rights in accordance with our ongoing policy of constructive engagement on such issues. He welcomed the positive steps that the Amir has taken towards national unity and to improve Bahrain's human rights situation since his accession, and offered our assistance and advice on human rights issues.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but she did not mention "democracy" which was the other part of my Question. Is not one of the most fundamental rights of every adult to participate in the control of public affairs? Therefore, will the Government encourage the Amir to enter into a dialogue with the leaders of the Committee for Popular Partition about the restoration of the 1973 constitution and parliament? Further, even if they are not prepared to introduce democracy immediately, will the Minister advise the Government of Bahrain that the expression of a willingness to do so in principle and to have a dialogue with that committee on the modalities and the time-scale would do an enormous amount to decrease tension in the island?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have spoken with the Amir. We found that our policy of constructive engagement on sensitive issues, such as human rights, was more successful than any approach taken hitherto. Of course, this is an opportunity for us to engage, and engage well, with the Amir to forward the general democratisation process. We are very hopeful that that government will be sensitive to the matters raised by us.

Lord Tebbit: My Lords, will the Minister be unnerved to discover that I agree with her? Further, in order to strengthen her case, will she take into account that if Her Majesty's Government were to lecture the Government of Bahrain on these matters, they might be expected to lecture the Government of China, of Russia and of a good many other countries on exactly the same matter? I do not think that that would be conducive to good international relations.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am very relieved to know that there is a matter on which the noble Lord and I can perhaps concur. I doubt that it will be a rare occurrence, but I am happy to grasp it as it arises.
	We have engaged in a very constructive way with the Bahrainis on matters of mutual interest, including human rights. We have also discussed their concerns. Since his accession in March, the Amir has taken positive steps towards reconciliation with the Shi'a population of Bahrain and the opposition, which we have welcomed. Thus the process appears to be in good order.

Viscount Waverley: My Lords, are not women and youth the most effective catalyst throughout the Middle East for the embracement of human rights and democratic principles? Can the Minister say whether there are any projects encompassing women and youth which are available for the Government to support?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I have no specific answer to the noble Viscount's question but of course I endorse what he says. It is important that young people and women of all countries have such opportunities so that we can enhance human rights to ensure that our future is a little better than our past.

Lord Renton: My Lords, I spent a few days' holiday in Bahrain some years ago, and I found the people there happy and prosperous. Will the noble Baroness say how an extension of democracy and human rights would make them any happier?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, it is not for me to comment on whether they would or would not be happier. Certainly, your Lordships will be familiar with the Government's position in relation to these matters. Of course, we seek to have harmonious international relations with all countries. We are happy that we are well on the way to confirming and consolidating those steps in relation to Bahrain.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, from the Minister's reply to my supplementary question I was not quite clear whether the matter of democracy was raised. Without seeking to lecture--we get enough of those from the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, when he is present--I ask her once again whether the Amir was specifically asked whether he would enter into discussions with the leaders of the de facto opposition; that is, the Committee for Popular Partition, on the restoration of the 1973 constitution and the 1974 parliament. That is a simple question.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I do not have a specific answer to the noble Lord's question. I know that issues of sensitivity were raised. For the purposes of the Question, I have assumed that they were, but I certainly undertake to write to the noble Lord with a specific answer.

Business

Lord Carter: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement being made in another place on the European Council in Helsinki. The Statement is likely to be taken after the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on the Care Standards Bill.

Healthcare Services Bill [H.L.]

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to regulate the provision of certain healthcare services outside the National Health Service. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.--(Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne.)
	On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Select Committees of the House

Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the Lord Craig of Radley be appointed a member of the Committee of Selection, the House of Lords' Offices Committee, the Liaison Committee, the Committee for Privileges and the Procedure of the House Committee in the place of the Lord Weatherill.--(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Care Standards Bill [H.L.]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill has at its heart two key aims--first, to protect vulnerable people from abuse and neglect, and, secondly, to promote the highest standards of quality in the care that people receive, whoever is providing it.
	I am glad that so many noble Lords with experience and expertise in this area will speak during our Second Reading debate. I extend a particular welcome to my noble friend Lord Mackenzie of Culkein who will make his maiden speech. He was an excellent general secretary of COHSE and founder of my union, UNISON. He will bring many insights to your Lordships' House, particularly in this area.
	The coverage of the Bill is broad. It deals with private and voluntary healthcare, including the most acute and high-tech services provided in that sector. It deals with long-term nursing and social care for older people and disabled people and it deals with a wide range of services for children from residential care through to childminding and day care. In every one of those vitally important services people have a right to expect protection from harm and a right to expect that the care they receive will be of a decent standard.
	In many cases that is what they get. However, as noble Lords know only too well, too often that is not the case. A great number of inquiries and reports have highlighted the failings of the current systems for safeguarding people's welfare. The Care Standards Bill provides for radical and far-reaching improvements to the arrangements for ensuring quality and protection in these services. First of all, the Bill provides for the establishment of the national care standards commission. The commission will be responsible for the regulation of private and voluntary hospitals and clinics, of care homes for elderly or disabled people, of agencies providing care to people at home, and of children's homes, residential family centres, fostering agencies and adoption agencies. It will also carry out welfare inspections of boarding schools and colleges which accommodate children.
	The Registered Homes Act of 1984 has for many years been considered ineffective and inappropriate in the way it deals with private healthcare services. This Bill will for the first time set out a clear and separate category of independent hospital, with specific regulations made to set out the detailed requirements and standards that every such hospital must meet. In recognition of the importance and distinctive needs of healthcare there will also be a separate division within the national care standards commission which will concentrate on this area.
	One of the problems of the current system is that with 100 health authorities in England and another five in Wales the average health authority inspection unit simply does not have the expertise necessary to regulate the acute healthcare services. With the concentration of expertise that comes from a single national body, that will no longer be the case. For the first time we shall have proper, strong standards for private and voluntary healthcare services, with inspection and, where necessary, enforcement action carried out by expert inspectors dedicated to that field. People who use private healthcare can be assured that private hospitals will be required to work to proper modern standards of healthcare with adequate numbers of appropriately qualified staff, equipment and facilities that are up to standard and thorough arrangements for back-up should an emergency arise.
	I shall cover briefly the range of services that the national care standards commission will also be responsible for regulating. The commission will regulate the 30,000 care homes in this country accommodating nearly half a million people, including for the first time care homes run by local authorities which until now have been exempt. In providing for a national, independent regulation system, as promised in our election manifesto, we shall remove the inconsistency and inefficiencies of the current regime. The split between local authorities which regulate residential homes, and health authorities which regulate nursing homes, will be replaced by a single and flexible system that will allow care homes to provide a mix of personal care and nursing care appropriate to the needs of those receiving the care. The commission will still require that where nursing care is provided there are appropriate qualified nursing staff to deliver that care. But the regulation system will be geared to people's individual needs and not to artificial boundaries.
	For the first time care provided to people in their own homes will be subject to statutory regulation. As your Lordships will be aware, care in people's own homes is increasingly provided where in the past admission to residential care would have been necessary. We welcome that trend. The introduction of regulation in this sector will be a huge step forward in improving quality and safety for people who rely on such services.
	The importance of protecting vulnerable children is deeply felt throughout this House. The national care standards commission will have significant responsibilities for safeguarding children. All types of children's homes will be regulated and subjected to rigorous inspections. This, again, will include local authority homes that are currently exempt and small private children's homes for fewer than four children.
	The Bill will also introduce for the first time regulatory regimes for fostering agencies and for residential family centres. The national care standards commission will also regulate the crucial and specialised work of voluntary adoption agencies in a way similar to the current system operated by the Social Services Inspectorate. In recognition of its role in safeguarding children, the national care standards commission will appoint a children's rights director whose job it will be to ensure that children's rights and welfare are at the heart of all its responsibilities for regulating children's services.
	The regulation of children's services must not be swamped by the much larger volume of adult services that the commission will deal with. The children's rights director will also provide a crucial function in being the person who will always be there for anyone to turn to when they have concerns or suspicions about what might be happening in a children's home or in other services. Too often, when scandals of abuse have been uncovered, children or staff members say that they knew something was not right but they were uncertain who to go to when they had concerns. I hope that we will not in future hear that people did not know who they could turn to.
	The provisions in Part IV of the Bill establish a general social care council. Many people, including a number of your Lordships, have been calling for such a council for many years. We made it clear soon after coming to office that we would deliver on our long-standing commitment to establish the council, and this Bill keeps that promise. We have made it very clear, though, that the council will not be a body solely concerned with professionally qualified social workers. That would indeed be a missed opportunity. When the social care work-force numbers 1 million, 80 per cent of whom have currently no recognised qualification, we would be failing in our duties unless we set up a body whose concern went wider than the 50,000 most qualified members of that 1 million-strong workforce.
	Professional social work and the system that underpins it will certainly be a crucial concern of the council, but it will oversee standards and training throughout the whole of the sector. Indeed, one of its first tasks will be to draw up codes of practice and conduct for social care workers and social care employers. These codes, the first of their kind in this sector, will set out enforceable standards of conduct and practice expected of all those working in social care.
	The general social care council will also register individual staff working on an incremental basis. With such low levels of qualifications, it will clearly take some time for the training in the sector to reach the levels where the majority of the workforce could be registered. For that reason the Bill also provides a mechanism to ensure that a social worker who has harmed someone in his or her care will not find his or her way back into the workforce.
	Following the Protection of Children Act passed earlier this year, there is already a central list of people judged unsuitable to work with children. Part VI of the Bill introduces an equivalent measure for dealing with people who are unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults. I recall the concern expressed by many of your Lordships in debate that adults can be vulnerable as well as children. We have listened to those concerns and we agree with them. Nor is this measure confined to adults with a learning disability, which was the subject of our debate at that time. Any adult receiving care can be vulnerable, and the definition in the Bill is drawn accordingly.
	I turn now to the Government's proposals for the regulation of child care, dealt with in Part V of the Bill. During our first two years in office we created as many child care places as the previous administration managed to create in 18 years. We will now build on those achievements. We recognise that for young people in particular the line between care and education is becoming increasingly blurred. Given this, reform of the regulatory regime for day care and childminding is important. The Bill will transfer responsibility for regulation from individual local authorities to a national body. We have decided that this will be a new, distinct arm of Ofsted.
	Bringing together the regulatory systems for child care and nursery education will not only help create greater coherence and integration but will also lead to improvements in the quality of early years service. Establishing national standards for Ofsted to operate will ensure that child safety will no longer be a matter of geography but one of consistency across all of the country. The present system has become, in effect, one of localised regulation. This has led to widely varying interpretations in different parts of the country. A national framework will help to ensure a level playing field for all providers and will deliver clarity for both the regulated and the regulator.
	We are also using this opportunity to make other improvements. Importantly, for the first time the Bill allows for new duties to be placed on those involved in looking after children aged between eight and 14, or 16 in the case of disabled children. These providers will be required to demonstrate that they and their employees are suitable people to look after children.
	Taken in total, these measures will radically reform the regulation of child care. This is a crucial step towards creating a level playing field for public, private and voluntary sector providers. More importantly, they will give parents greater peace of mind knowing that their children are being properly cared for, and our children will benefit for many years to come.
	Before I conclude, I should like to say a few words about the arrangements in Wales. All of the provisions in the Bill apply to Wales as well as to England. In keeping with the devolution settlement, the National Assembly for Wales will be responsible for the functions that are conferred in respect of Wales. In Wales, the responsibilities of the national care standards commission will be carried out by the Assembly itself. The Bill establishes a care council for Wales which will match the general social care council in England. For the regulation of early years provision, there will be a formal partnership arrangement between the National Assembly, which will regulate the child care services, and Estyn, the Welsh equivalent of Ofsted.
	These arrangements, which follow separate consultation exercises carried out by the Welsh Assembly, will mean that the same objectives and principles will be met in Wales in a way that suits the needs and circumstances of Wales. That, of course, is the purpose of the devolution settlement. I believe that the Care Standards Bill is an example of that settlement working in practice.
	The Bill will provide modern, reliable arrangements for protecting the welfare of vulnerable people. It will put in place rigorous and coherent regulatory arrangements. As well as safeguarding people against abuse, it will promote high quality standards. It will revitalise the social care workforce and provide it with the recognition that it deserves. It will benefit staff; it will benefit those who run care services; and, most of all, it will benefit those who depend on those services. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.--(Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.)

Earl Howe: My Lords, the House has reason to be grateful to the Minister, for the second time in less than a week, for a lucid and balanced explanation of an important Bill. This Bill, though, unlike the one that we debated last Tuesday, scans a particularly wide horizon. It concerns itself not with a restricted range of public services provided to a small though deserving minority, but rather with the entire scope of activity embraced by the term "social services" and with a whole lot more besides, including acute and long-term healthcare. In so doing, it speaks directly to the users of such services, and potentially, therefore, to every single one of us.
	On this side of the House we recognise the concerns that have led the Government to bring forward such a far-reaching measure. They are concerns that we share. Children and vulnerable adults in all too many reported cases have suffered from abuse and neglect. No one has a clear idea of what standards of care should be aspired to or treated as the norm in residential homes, nursing homes, children's homes or boarding schools. The regulation of these various kinds of establishment is governed by a veritable patchwork of arrangements that nevertheless fail to be all-embracing. Standards vary according to where you happen to be, as do the costs of providing very similar services in similar parts of the country. Some 80 per cent of the entire social care workforce have no recognised qualifications or training. In the independent acute sector the arrangements for inspecting and enforcing standards in hospitals and clinics are woefully out of date and, in some cases, non-existent.
	It is quite plain that if these concerns are to be tackled effectively, it will be necessary to underpin any new arrangements by means of regulation. The independent acute sector has indeed been pressing for such regulation for years. The Bill that we are now considering embodies that aim. But if we decide to regulate, there are several points that we need to remember. The first is that any regulation carries with it a burden of cost. Therefore, regulation must not only have a beneficial purpose; it must also be framed and implemented in a way that is cost-effective and not overly burdensome to those directly affected by it.
	The second point that we need to bear in mind is that a piece of regulation that sets standards of good practice must focus on the standards that really matter and make sure that all those within its natural purview are treated in a consistent and uniform way. In the present case one of the things that we are trying to avoid is the "unlevel" playing field--and a playing field where half the time the referee is off the pitch. When we have finished regulating we do not want to find a pitch which is still obviously unlevel and a game that cannot proceed because the referee spends all his time blowing the whistle.
	Perhaps I may say at the outset that we on these Benches are able to issue a cautious welcome to a fair proportion of this Bill. But we have to recognise that the Bill is in large measure an empty box. It establishes a legislative framework with little indication of its content. That of itself may not be a cause for complaint--indeed, it may be unavoidable--but it leads to the unfortunate consequence that we can only debate headlines and not detail. The devil will lie in that detail and we shall not be made aware of it until such time as the succession of statutory instruments is laid regrettably, I have to say, under the negative procedure.
	One important set of such important regulations will be those that emerge from the consultation exercise that is currently in train under the title "Fit for the Future?" on the national standards for residential and nursing homes for the elderly. I have little doubt that we can devise a way of debating some of these detailed proposals in Committee should we wish to do so.
	However, the debate is bound to be inconclusive because until the consultation period has ended there is nothing that the Minster can say by way or reassurance to us beyond the broadest of undertakings. That is why I have to sound a note of deep unhappiness over this Bill, not in the first instance over its content, but over the timing of its introduction. We really ought to have the draft regulations in front of us as we debate it so we can see what it will mean in practice. I shall say more about where that leads us in a few moments.
	What then of the content? I fear that there are a fair few criticisms that I wish straightway to lay at the Government's door. The first is that in one or two important respects they have retreated from the positions that they adopted, in largely reassuring terms, in their White Paper of November 1998, called Modernising Social Services. That document recognised a critical fact about social services: that they are a local service that varies from one part of the country to another in response to differing local needs and circumstances.
	In recognition of that it was originally proposed that in England there should be eight regional commissions for care standards based on the boundaries of the NHS and social care regions. That proposal has been abandoned in the Bill in favour of one national care standards commission covering the whole of England. I question the wisdom of that change. The big advantage of autonomous local boards would have been their understanding of the particular needs and circumstances of their own areas--for example, in the context of health improvement programmes-- and the ability to draw their board members from representatives of users and providers in the locality.
	As it is, I confess to a feeling of inner dread at the creation of a single national body issued with a truly gigantic remit, which will find it all too easy to issue edicts from a position of lofty eminence and which will all too readily come to be regarded as being remote from reality.
	The White Paper also spoke about achieving greater consistency of standards across the board, with users and providers knowing exactly where they stand. I have every sympathy with that aspiration. But what are we to make of it when we find that apparently in the acute sector NHS pay beds are to be excluded from regulation? What are we to make of it when we see that day care services for adults are also omitted? Exclusions such as these make a nonsense of the so-called level playing field when a person lying in one bed or sitting in a particular chair is covered by regulatory standards and by a regime of inspection and enforcement, but a person lying in a similar room nearby or sitting in the next chair, is not. I worry about the fact that the regulation of acute hospitals has been lumped in with nursing and care homes. It is almost unbelievable that acute surgical activity should be overseen by the same body as regulates residential and nursing homes.
	But I am sorry to say that I believe I know the reason. The lively debates that we had in this House during the passage of the health Bill revealed a concern shared by many of your Lordships that the Government have a duty to establish a regulatory regime to protect all patients, whether they choose to use the NHS or the independent sector. Both the NHS and private hospitals should be subject to the same duty of quality and to equivalent standards of clinical governance. Yet, as I read the explanatory notes, the care standards commission appears to have but a single focus; namely, care standards. It seems that clinical standards are outwith its remit. I am disappointed and depressed that the Government have not seized this golden opportunity to make the clinical quality agenda a reality for all patients.
	As we debate this Bill, it is the patient, the service user, the elderly resident in a home and the child in care whom we need to keep at the front of our minds at all times. Everything that appears in this Bill or arises directly out of it, must be for the benefit of those people. That may sound like a statement of the blindingly obvious, but it is a message that, if the Government are not careful, they may lose sight of. My heart sank as I read the first set of detailed draft standards relating to residential and nursing homes for the elderly. These are some of the suggested standards: single rooms in current use must have at least 10 square metres of usable floor space or 12 square metres for wheelchair users. New single rooms must have at least 12 square metres of usable floor space. Each room must have overhead and local lighting; two chairs, at least one of which is an armchair. There must be enclosed space for hanging clothes, a TV aerial point, at least three accessible double electric sockets, and so on.
	As regards nursing requirements, it is proposed that in the morning there should be ratios of five residents for each member of staff; seven to one in the afternoon and 10 to one at night, with additional staff on duty at peak times of activity.
	What kind of brave new world are we in? It is prescriptiveness gone mad. It is an approach which reveals that the plot has been totally and utterly lost as regards what "care" actually means. Worse still, it is likely to prove devastating to the viability of many hundreds of nursing and residential homes throughout the country.
	Perhaps I may quote some of the comments about this. The first is from the nursing director of the Registered Homes Association. He says,
	"It is not about how many nurses you have got, it is the skills of those nurses that are important. Standards must be meaningful and concentrate on quality, not merely on physical standards".
	The next quotation is from a residential home proprietor in the south west. He says,
	"I have difficulty comprehending how an increase in bedroom size can have that great an effect on the care and well being of our residents. The vast majority spend no waking time in them whatsoever. These standards would bankrupt us. Eighteen residents would be homeless. Twenty four staff, many of them breadwinners, would be unemployed".
	Yet another pointed out that the only way he would be able to increase the usable floor space in bedrooms would be to rip out en suite toilets which he has just put in at considerable expense. Work like that is as absurd as it is unaffordable. Indeed, in a survey carried out by the magazine Caring Times, in which 400 care homes of all sizes took part, it was shown that no fewer than 54 per cent of all beds and 49 per cent of jobs would be lost immediately if the standards in Fit for the Future? were introduced. More than 50 per cent of respondents said that they would be forced to close due to bankruptcy. The Department of Health has estimated that if the draft standards were to be applied now, without any transitional period, 20 to 23 per cent of independent sector residential homes would not meet the space and amenity standards; 12 per cent of nursing homes and 55 per cent of local authority residential homes would not do so. Furthermore, 53 to 56 per cent of nursing homes would not meet the staffing standards. Noble Lords should note that the public sector as well as the independent sector would be affected.
	The real world is out there. Those who live in it feel that the regulations about to descend on them have been invented by inspectors for inspectors, without any heed to the meagre income levels of many residential homes which are barely enough to pay staff, let alone to service capital. I should add in passing that these income levels are a direct result of totally inadequate revenue support grant settlements that in turn directly affect fee rates.
	To return to my comments of a moment ago, all regulation brings with it a burden of cost. From where is the money to come to upgrade all these homes, if that is what the Government are determined to insist upon? Unless a little sense is knocked into the process by Ministers--and there is still time to do that--the consequences in human terms and for social services will be dire. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the pall of uncertainty that has been cast over the industry as a consequence of these proposals. Owners of nursing or residential homes cannot take out a mortgage unless they are either extremely lucky or they sell their properties. One correspondent recently described the situation as a blight.
	The key indicators in assessing standards of care may not be those that are easy to measure, but they are the ones that matter; namely, the quality of the overall care experience. Somehow the Government must get closer to those indicators. In doing so, they must remember that the needs and preferences of service users are diverse. It is salutary to remind ourselves of one of the critical paragraphs in the White Paper, paragraph 4.48, which I shall quote in part:
	"too much national prescription can lead to bad regulation. The key objective must be to develop a limited range of standards to apply at national level, with a certain degree of flexibility allowed more locally. These standards will focus on the key areas that most affect the quality of life experienced by service users ... [and] will need to have regard to costs and effectiveness when they are being developed".
	Those are the principles that underpin the national service frameworks and, by sticking to them, Ministers can keep this show on the road.
	The Committee stage of the Bill will lead us to examine a great deal of detail that is as yet unclear, including the commission, its composition, powers and duties, its cost and procedures. We shall have many questions to ask on the general social care council, the implications of the blacklist procedures, the repeal of the Nurses Agencies Act and much more. However, for now I shall conclude by expressing my hope that, as so often in the past, your Lordships' House will perform its role as a scrutinising Chamber to good effect. On these Benches we look forward to playing our part in that process and ensuring that we make this important Bill a better one.

European Council, Helsinki, 10th-11th December

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
	"Accompanied by my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I attended a meeting of the European Council in Helsinki on 10th and 11th December.
	"The key decisions of the Helsinki Summit were far-reaching. It increased to 12 the number of countries involved in accession negotiations with the EU and gave candidate status to Turkey for the first time. That presages a hugely enlarged EU and, over time, with the membership of Turkey now formally on the agenda, an EU with its borders stretching as far as the Middle East. In addition, it has significantly pushed forward European defence co-operation, allowing the EU for the first time to build the capability of acting where NATO is not engaged. These are truly historic decisions for the EU.
	"Before the start of the summit, we learned of the decision of the French Government to refuse to abide by the decision of the EU and lift the ban on British beef. As I said in this House on 10th November, it was always preferable to settle this through discussion and clarification; but failing that we would have to go to law. We worked hard to reach an understanding with France. In the end, the Commission tabled a summary of our response to French questions which we and the Commission believed should have satisfied reasonable concerns. Unfortunately, the French Government were unable to agree them. The Commission is now taking France to court, and it will issue its formal legal opinion tomorrow.
	"There were some who said that we should have tabled this issue at the Helsinki Summit. I can think of nothing more counter-productive or misjudged. At present, British beef can be sold in 13 out of the 15 EU countries. The Commission is completely on side with us. The beef ban is in law lifted. To have reopened the entire issue--and given all 15 countries an obligation to debate an issue the vast majority regard as closed--would have been tactical ineptitude on a grand scale. Neither do I think it is sensible to threaten a trade war with France. We have trade with France worth billions of pounds. To break the law ourselves, while seeking to have it upheld against France, would be folly. We will not do it.
	"To return to the summit, the main issue was the enlargement of the European Union, which this Government strongly support. Democracy and the market economy are now firmly established in the majority of central and eastern European countries, and they are increasingly ready to join the European Union. We also owe an obligation to those countries who stood by us in the Kosovo conflict earlier this year.
	"Six countries--Poland; Hungary; the Czech Republic; Estonia; Slovenia and Cyprus--began negotiations last year. The European Council decided to open negotiations early next year with six more: Latvia; Lithuania; Slovakia; Malta; Bulgaria and Romania. The process is lengthy and detailed, but it is now firmly under way.
	"On Cyprus, the European Council welcomed the negotiations under way in New York between the Cypriot leaders. Successful conclusion of these talks would not only bring a welcome end to a long-running dispute, but also facilitate Cyprus's accession to the EU, and we urge all those involved to make every effort to reach agreement. But at Helsinki, Heads of Government endorsed our view that Cyprus's accession was a matter for decision by the member states of the European Union and that there should be no pre-conditions.
	"The European Council also opened a new and much more positive chapter in its relations with Turkey. This has long been a preoccupation for Britain; Turkey is of great strategic importance, and an ally in NATO. A more constructive relationship between Turkey and the EU is overdue. But we have now secured that. Turkey is now a candidate country, destined to join the European Union on the same basis as the other candidates. It will enjoy all the benefits of other candidates, including financial assistance, even though accession negotiations are unlikely to begin for some time. It is an excellent outcome.
	"The intergovernmental conference next year is aimed at preparing the Union for the impending enlargement. The Helsinki Council confirmed that the conference should focus on the size and composition of the European Commission, the weighting of votes in the Council and the possible extension of qualified majority voting, in certain limited areas. The conference will begin in February and complete its work by the end of next year.
	"On security and defence, the European Council endorsed our view that the top priority is for European nations to strengthen their military capabilities. At Helsinki, we agreed that member states should, by 2003, be able to deploy and sustain for at least one year military forces of up to 50,000 or 60,000 troops, capable of a range of tasks essentially defined as humanitarian and rescue missions, peacekeeping or peace enforcement.
	"There have been suggestions that this agreement to increase the options open to us in future crises has adverse implications for NATO, or that the European Union is creating a European army. This is the opposite of the case. The European Council made clear that the EU will launch and conduct military operations only where NATO as a whole is not engaged. The process will involve full consultation and transparency with NATO. The six non-EU allies will be involved and consulted before decisions are taken, and will be able to take a full part in resulting operations. The EU will avoid unnecessary duplication with NATO.
	"Final decisions on whether to involve troops will remain firmly with national governments. These arrangements do not imply a European army, as the Helsinki Council made explicitly clear.
	"But it would be a tragic mistake, repeating mistakes of British European policy over the past few decades, if Britain opted out of the debate on European defence and left the field to others. This is a debate we must shape and influence from the start, because our vital strategic interests are affected by it. As a result of our participation, it is moving in a clear direction reinforcing NATO, not in opposition to it. I completely reject the view of those who would have us opt out of this issue.
	"The conflict in Chechnya was much on our minds at Helsinki. Our relationship with Russia is a vital one, above all for the security and stability of our continent. We want Russia to continue on the path of democracy, market economy and the rule of law and will continue to support the transition process. But business as usual is not possible while human rights are being comprehensively abused in a corner of the Russian Federation. The EU called for a political solution to this issue and adopted a series of actions designed to back up the words of strong condemnation.
	"On the withholding tax, the Council agreed a sensible way forward. We will continue to work for a solution to the issue of tax evasion that rightly concerns some of our EU partners, Germany in particular. But this cannot be done at the expense of a major European financial market based here in London. I have made it clear that we will not permit that. We also have genuine concern about the efficacy of the measures proposed. So we have also insisted that, in debating the way forward, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal for an exchange of information on a basis that involves more than just EU countries should be examined. There is increasing recognition that it is no good adopting measures in the EU if the only impact is that the market in savings moves outside the EU. The rest of the tax package we can support, although of course other countries have difficulties with parts of it.
	"The Helsinki Summit dealt with pressing issues of the day, but also had a vision for the future. We made the historic decision that the Europe of the future would be one that embraced countries in eastern Europe that 10 short years ago were only just emerging from totalitarian communist rule. This enlarged Europe is one that would have been unimaginable until the very recent past and it is one that we should embrace. We also made the decision that our continent of Europe, which twice this century has lost millions of its citizens in the two most bloody wars in human history, should now co-operate in defence where the object is to help to keep the peace. A bigger European Union, a union committed to embracing countries committed to democracy, a Europe of nations determined to use their collective strength to advance our values--that is our vision and I commend it to the House."
	My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, perhaps I may say at the outset how grateful I am to the Leader of the House for repeating the Prime Minister's Statement. But will she agree with me that it was strong on generalisation but weak on any details?
	On a more helpful note, I concur with her on the gravity of the situation in Chechnya. Is she aware that we support the measures agreed at Helsinki, including the diversion of TACIS funding, but that we also need to ensure that we do not undermine democratic forces in Russia? Is she concerned that, strongly as we condemn the unacceptable and brutal Russian action, the bombing of Belgrade and other cities by NATO may have provided a pretext--but certainly no excuse--for the Russian action? Does she agree that we need to think very carefully about the application of the Blair doctrine on armed military interventions in other countries' internal affairs?
	I turn to the substance of the summit. Is the noble Baroness aware that we on this side strongly support the expansion of the European Union to the states to the east? In particular, does she recall that we have on repeated occasions deplored the offensive attitude taken by some EU members towards Turkey? Will she accept our support for inclusion of Turkey in the process of enlargement? But is she aware that we do not believe that admission to the Union must invariably be on the basis of the acquis communautaire? Is it not important to campaign for greater flexibility within the Union? Was it not regrettable that at the recent WTO conference the EU was adopting protectionist positions, when it is clear that free trade has been the greatest creator of prosperity in the world in the past two centuries? Do the Government remain unequivocally committed to the principles of free trade? Did the Prime Minister urge that position on our EU partners? In particular, did he oppose any requirement on aspirant members of the EU that they should regulate their labour markets and industries in order to qualify for EU admission? Would it not be bizarre for states like Estonia, which have just escaped central regulation and freed their economies, to have to re-regulate to join the EU? I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to assure the House that that will not be the case.
	This brings me to the reality of the Helsinki conference. Do the Government regret that after their unilateral abandonment of the previous government's hard-won positions on the Social and Employment Chapters they have received precisely nothing? Are the Government ashamed that up and down this country as we speak there are millions of businesses--some of them small traders--wrestling with form after form, and regulation after regulation, that have been imposed on British business under the Social Chapter and various employment directives? Are they not concerned that our competitiveness is being sapped and the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs destroyed by such regulation? What was it all for? What has the Prime Minister achieved for small businesses in Britain?
	In 1997 the Prime Minister preened himself, cycling around Amsterdam as a great European. No more bicycles now, my Lords. Instead, he has found himself being railroaded towards imposing a disastrous tax on the City of London. He was greeted with contempt and ridicule when he tried, far too belatedly, to speak up for our farmers. Does not this summit represent the complete failure of the Prime Minister's strategy on Europe? Will the Leader of the House tell us one thing that he has achieved by his willingness to sign away the interests of British business in Amsterdam? Has not his whole policy on Europe been exposed as utterly naive? We were told by the Prime Minister on 14th July that,
	"the decision to lift the beef ban has come about because the government have a constructive attitude to Europe. That is why we got the beef ban lifted and it is another example of new Labour working".
	Was that not utterly naive? Should not the Prime Minister, and in his absence the noble Baroness, apologise to our beef farmers who were misled in this way? Will she tell us precisely when Germany will lift the ban on our beef and when she expects the law case against France to be concluded? Does she regret not pressing on her colleagues the need to respond earlier to the unequivocal call from this House to end the beef on the bone ban? Was the vote on that not an example of this House working--and of New Labour failing to listen? Would the position of Ministers arguing for our beef abroad have been much stronger had they spoken up for it at home? Is it therefore not an insult to our farmers to be told that the Prime Minister did not raise this issue at the summit and that--I quote from the briefing--he,
	"was so angry he didn't even mention the crisis when he met with Lionel Jospin last night"?
	Why did he not mention it? Was he just weak? Was he temporarily embarrassed? Had he forgotten his French? My French is not on a par with the much-vaunted French of the Prime Minister, but is not the phrase he was looking for, "C'est inacceptable"?
	Is not the handling of the withholding tax another example of the foolishness of the Prime Minister? Time and again at the Dispatch Box the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, no less, has been asked by the House to make clear to our partners that this country would veto a withholding tax. Would it not have been better if the Government had taken the advice of this House and made that clear from the outset? Will the Leader of the House make it clear that the Government will veto any withholding tax and that if any effort is made to impose it on Britain under any legal basis from without, we will not pass it into law? Will she declare unequivocally that a vital national interest is involved here and that the Luxembourg compromise will be invoked? Will she make it clear that Britain will reject the view, implicit in the Helsinki communique, that all savings in the EU should be taxed? When the Prime Minister says that he can,
	"accept the rest of the tax package",
	does that mean that he accepts the principle of tax harmonisation in Europe?
	Turning to some other issues, was there any discussion at Helsinki of the proposed new takeover directive? If so, did the Prime Minister make it clear that we would not accept any dilution of the freedom and flexibility of the Takeover Panel rules?
	On the question of a European army, what will be the common language of such an army? Will commands be given in English? Does the Minister agree with the warning of the US Deputy Secretary of State that,
	"America would not want to see an ESDI that comes into being first within NATO and finally grows away from NATO"?
	Is it the view of the UK Government that our prime strategic interest remains first, last and always the preservation of the NATO alliance? When the Prime Minister says that he will avoid unnecessary duplication with NATO, should he not mean "no duplication" with NATO?
	Was there any discussion of transport matters at the Helsinki Summit? If so, did the Prime Minister inform his colleagues of the new division of responsibilities within the DETR? Will the Minister join these Benches in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, on his promotion? Can she confirm that in all future EU Councils on transport it will be the noble Lord who will speak up for Britain?
	In conclusion, is it not clear that, far from moulding a new Europe, the Prime Minister has limped along behind an old integrationist agenda? Is that not why he agreed at Helsinki to open-ended discussion on abolishing our veto, to taxing savings and to the creation of a new Euro-army? Has he not carried off an unbelievable double--to sign up to the Euro-federalist agenda while simultaneously being isolated in Europe?
	Does the Minister recall that, when my noble friend Lady Thatcher was isolated, she won the British rebate; and that when my right honourable friend Mr Major was isolated, he won the UK opt-outs from the Social Chapter and the single currency? Is it not the truth that the Prime Minister is the first to return from a European summit both isolated and empty-handed? Over the past two and a half years he has given away vital British national interests and achieved precisely nothing. That is a humiliation for the Prime Minister, but it is also a tragedy for Europe and a tragedy for Britain.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I, too, want to add my congratulations to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House on the Statement that she has repeated. First, with regard to the French attempt to ban British beef, will she confirm that under the European Union there is a clear resort to legal action? Will also she confirm that in the case of other countries, such as the United States which has maintained a ban on British beef for many years, there is no such resort and no way in which that country can be legally obliged to take British beef, whereas that is not the case with France?
	Secondly, will the Minister confirm that, in rejecting a proposal for a withholding tax, the United Kingdom agrees that there are serious problems of evasion and money-laundering which must be dealt with and proposes to set up a working party under the European Union to investigate the problem and see how it might best be met?
	Thirdly, will the Minister confirm that in discussions with the United States on the issue of the European strategic and defence initiative, it was made clear by Mr Strobe Talbott and others that the United States welcomed such a development providing that there was proper consultation with the American administration; and that, in addition, the United States has made it plain that in some cases it would be willing to support, logistically and with intelligence information, those particular foreign policy initiatives that it supports but was never selfish enough to be directly engaged in? Given that, is it not the case that, at the summit, Europe has taken another step forward to a genuine and balanced partnership between the western nations?
	Does the noble Baroness agree that the ambitious and historic programme for a major enlargement, now to include a further six countries and Turkey, places heavy responsibilities on the existing member states to achieve a reasonable timetable? Is it the view of the noble Baroness and her right honourable friend the Prime Minister that we can be sure that the IGC will take place, and that it will deal with the major outstanding institutional issues, including a simplification of a European Union constitution?
	We commend the Prime Minister and the Government on their wider vision of where Europe should be and the efforts that they are making towards that. Does the Minister appreciate that there is an unbelievable double in respect of the Opposition, with half the party wanting to get out of Europe and half the party wanting to stand on the fence--an uncomfortable and physically impossible position to sustain?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, particularly for the vivid metaphor at the end of her remarks.
	On the general points raised by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about enlargement of the European Union and the terms of the acquis, I am sure that the noble Lord had read the extremely well-informed and authoritative debate that took place in this House last week, to which my noble friend Lady Scotland of Asthal replied, and the Private Notice Question relating to Chechnya, to which she also responded at the end of last week. I can add nothing helpful to what was said on that occasion, particularly as regards the flexibility that the UK Government seek to adopt on the acquis and the transition measures being taken with the other candidate states. However, we shall want to return to those points. The same applies in relation to Chechnya. I have taken advice as to whether anything further can be added regarding the preservation of the safe corridor that we all hope will be achieved to maintain the flow of refugees. The situation remains similar to that reported to the House by my noble friend at the end of last week.
	Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness raised questions relating to the European defence situation and whether it might lead inevitably to Europe being in conflict with NATO and in particular with our American allies. The noble Baroness rightly quoted one American expert in this area. Perhaps I may quote the US Defense Secretary. At the NATO ministerial meeting on the 2nd and 3rd of December, he said that for many years the United States Congress had been asking the Europeans to assume a greater burden. To precis his remarks, he said that the United States welcomed the arrangements that would be discussed at Helsinki and understood that it would be done in the context of having a European capability that would strengthen NATO. He added that there was no ground for speculation that somehow it would lead to a division between Europe and the United States. Noble Lords who have had a chance to examine the conclusions of the Helsinki Summit will have seen that at paragraph 27 there is an explicit undertaking spelling out clearly that this is in no way leading to the formation of a European army. Therefore, the noble Lord's question as to the language in which commands would be given is, frankly, irrelevant.
	In passing, perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness that the IGC is scheduled to take place, and will end, by this time next year. Its primary concerns will, we hope, be focused on the reform of the structures that we have discussed several times in this House, particularly with a view to the arrangements that will be necessary when we come to examine the wider application of the candidate state.
	On the question of beef, I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. There is little more to be said given that the Prime Minister did not speak to the French Prime Minister on the subject. The noble Lord's understanding of the Prime Minister's private conversations with the French Prime Minister is slightly better informed than is mine, but I know that this subject was not included on the formal agenda--for the simple reason that, as was said in the colloquial language of last week's press statements, the time for diplomacy has ended and the only thing left now is to see the French in court. That is certainly the intention. There is no question but that the Government have been anything but precise in their decisions all along the line on making the best possible progress. As to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about the effectiveness of the situation in Europe, rather than dealing with the United States or British Commonwealth, the latter are in exactly the same position in refusing British beef imports, but there would be no legal redress because there would be no legal framework within which to work.
	I relate this anecdote in contrast with the assumptions of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that nothing changes in Europe and everything is the worst of all possible worlds. I speak rarely in this House about my role as Minister for Women but it is appropriate to recall something that entirely demonstrates the step change in the relationship between this country and our European partners since the present Government came to power.
	During exactly the same period as the Helsinki conference was in progress under the full spotlight of the international media, I was chairing in this country a meeting of European Union Ministers on women's and equality issues, at which there was practical discussion of arrangements between our different countries on some of the issues that most affect the everyday lives of our population. Although those discussions did not lead to any concrete or universal decisions, they produced a useful and important exchange of views, which can be taken forward. I shall take them forward tomorrow at a meeting with my right honourable friend David Blunkett and his counterpart the Portuguese Minister for Employment on issues relating to women's employment in this country and the wider European Union.
	Such practical exchanges and detailed discussions by Ministers at a policy level contribute to the thickening and organisation of European issues. They are not in the glare of the media spotlight during a ministerial summit, but illustrate precisely what we are achieving in terms of our different relationships with Europe.
	The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was determined to display the Prime Minister as being isolated in a way that led to this country being undermined and mocked. A columnist writing in the Daily Telegraph this morning stated that,
	"flying solo on certain questions at any given time being inherent in the process of continual negotiation that is the hallmark of intergovernmentalism".
	I accept that, and I agree with the noble Baroness's concluding remark that this is about a different vision of Europe and a practical working arrangement, which I hope that I have illustrated with the anecdote about my own responsibilities.

Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I ask for clarification on the presidential conclusions. The noble Baroness spoke about the intergovernmental conference's rather focused agenda. Two phrases seem to open the floodgates of possible extra activity that might not be in the interest of concluding matters by December next year. The conclusions refer to,
	"other necessary amendments to the Treaty arising as regards the European institutions in connection with the above issues...The incoming presidency will report to the European Council and may propose additional issues to be taken on the agenda of the conference".
	Does that not suggest that the floodgates could easily be opened by the new presidency, in putting on the agenda all sorts of exciting and interesting but delaying matters?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, it was made quite clear that the basic agenda items would be those originally agreed at Cologne. I am sure that I do not need to remind the noble Lord of the size and composition of the Commission, the weighting of the votes in the Council and the possible extension of qualified majority voting.
	As I understand it, the noble Lord refers to the fact that a few additional items may be added later. They would be in the context of enlargement and reform, not extending the scope of the IGC. It is clear that the new conference is not a big policy opening. It will be about practical matters: to make more effective and efficient the institutions that were thought this time last year to be rather less than accountable.

Lord Boardman: My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that the main reason for member states requiring the withholding tax is their failure to collect taxation from their own members? If they would remove the secrecy imposed on banking accounts, their problem would be made much easier. Does the noble Baroness accept that the Government's practice of suggesting compromises and further conferences on that question merely delays the day when they will be forced to make some concession? Would it not be more sensible to say to those pressing for some withholding tax to be imposed, "Get lost. Put your own house in order; do not leave us to be your tax collector"?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, that is probably exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in diplomatic language, at the ECOFIN discussions at the end of last week. The group will look at the whole package of tax arrangements proposed and discussed at Helsinki. The UK Government have made it absolutely clear that there is no question of any change that would prevent use of the City eurobond market, which we are determined to protect.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there are many more important issues in relation to the European standing force than whether or not English will be the working language? Annexe 4 announces that there will be a new standing political and military committee of the European Council that could or would act as the command authority for the standing force. How will that new body be accountable to heads of government and national parliaments?
	What would constitute a European army? The communique says that the new force will not constitute a European army. We need further explanation. Also, my noble friend referred to a union of nations. Is she aware that many of our continental partners take the view that the nation state is an anachronism and is just about dead? Can she say how the Government will make it absolutely clear to other countries and leaders that Britain continues to believe in the nation state and will progress that belief within the European Union?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I cannot authoritatively explain the position because I have not asked the specific question that my noble friend asked of me. I imagine that the new political and security standing committee would report through precisely the same mechanism as previous committees with that status. If I am mistaken, I will write to my noble friend.
	The idea behind the common defence arrangements is to provide a more flexible rapid response force in certain situations, particularly where there are humanitarian crises or difficulties of the type that Kosovo might produce--although in that example, NATO was involved. As I told the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, it is explicit in the conclusions of the summit that it cannot in any language or understanding be remotely regarded as an army.
	My noble friend Lord Stoddart invites me to into an area that is almost one of political philosophy. I am sure that the Government will at every opportunity make perfectly clear that the concept of the nation state is one that we in this country completely understand, will continue completely to support, and wish to see embraced within the context of the wider European Union.

Lord Biffen: My Lords, perhaps I may reinforce as best I can the points made by my noble friend Lord Boardman concerning the withholding tax. Does not the whole protracted debate on it and its complexity underline the value of the veto as part of the negotiating process? In that context, what does the noble Baroness believe to be the prospects at Helsinki of an enlarged European Union of 28 nation states comprising 540 million people? In that situation is there not a danger of our legislative identity being swamped, and what proposals do the Government have to deal with it?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, as to progress on discussions relating to the withholding tax, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, I did not make explicit that the conclusion of the ECOFIN Council in December 1997 was that the discussions should not apply to eurobonds and similar instruments. In a sense, although this debate may have been going on for two years, we have always made clear our bottom-line position which we are determined to protect.
	As to the wider point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, about whether these issues will become more complex with the increase in the number of member states, some of which perhaps have an understanding of government arrangements and democratic institutions which is different from that in western Europe, without repeating what my noble friend Lady Scotland said in the debate last week, that is why it is important to have a flexible transition period. That is also why, as I said in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, these issues are absolutely crucial to the arrangements which are built up during progress of the IGC.

Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in view of the fact that some little time will elapse before the next intergovernmental conference, will my noble friend ensure that the public generally are made aware of the precise attitude of Her Majesty's Government towards the findings and recommendations of the so-called "three wise men"? Will she ensure that the substance of those proposals, which are likely to have an enormous effect on Europe's institutions, is thoroughly debated? Will my noble friend also ensure that steps are taken to acquaint the public and Parliament with any independent proposals of the Government before the IGC, bearing in mind that there should be a constructive contribution originating with ourselves?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, as to my noble friend's final point, the Government will publish a White Paper early next year on their approach to the principle of the IGC and the issues that it raises, which may well cover some of the points raised this afternoon. I am not in a position to give my noble friend precise information on whether that will also embrace the specific response to the committee of three wise men. If I become aware of it, I shall let him know. From previous experience, I am aware that my noble friend probably has better and more exact channels of information on these matters than I do. As to broader public debate on the issues, it was made explicit in the conclusions at Helsinki that this matter should be more widely discussed. I am aware that my noble friend is always assiduous in pursuing these matters in your Lordships' House, and I doubt that we shall be in ignorance for long.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, what does the definition of Turkey as a candidate for membership of the European Union add to what was said at the Luxembourg Summit? Are not the conditions then laid down--that Turkey should align herself with human rights and the treatment of minorities that are common in the rest of Europe--to be upheld, plus the condition relating to Cyprus which, as far as I know, does not affect any other candidate? Does the role of Turkey as a candidate member make any difference to the conditions that that country must fulfil?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, it probably makes the noble Lord's concerns more precise; that is, the criteria against which Turkey's performance with regard to human rights and democracy are to be judged are easier to benchmark (if I may use that expression) than without formal candidate status. I am sure that the noble Lord welcomes, as I do, the extremely important lever which the European Union has on what happens in Turkey in a wider context. Clearly, Turkey does not yet meet the criteria on human rights, on the political status of minorities or on the general development of some of the democratic institutions. As to the relationship with Cyprus, although the membership criteria are the same for Turkey as for every other candidate, Greek and Turkish relations in this context are clearly of specific interest. Those will be covered in the political dialogue with Turkey about the procedures that are to be undertaken. If there were a settlement within Cyprus, that would facilitate its accession and might ease the whole situation.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I notice that the noble Baroness did not answer the question put by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde about the takeover directive. I wonder whether she can do so. The noble Baroness will be aware that this directive subjects the speedy findings of the Takeover Panel to the interminable delays of the Luxembourg Court and thus completely destroys hostile take-overs in the British economy. While she is at it, will the noble Baroness be so good as to say whether we are able to save the art market upon which we have also been outvoted on the question of droit de suite? Finally, I do not believe that she noticed the vitally important matter of corpus juris in the context of the European legal system which your Lordships debated on 25th November at which time the Government were unable to assure me that we had a veto. They merely said that we would have to pass primary legislation. Therefore, was any progress made at Helsinki on the takeover directive, the art market and the legal system?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for not dealing with the takeover situation. To be absolutely honest, I had forgotten that the noble Lord had mentioned it. Now I look at my notes, I see that I have no detailed briefing on it. I shall write to both noble Lords who have raised the matter. I can only apologise.
	As to the question of droit de suite, the proposal was put to the Internal Market Council, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, on 7th December. Our position remains that we can accept only proposals which adequately protect the London art market. It was not placed on the formal agenda at Helsinki, but I believe that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had what are described as discussions in the margins and was not discouraged by the responses of his counterparts with whom he discussed the matter. I also understand that the Minister of State, Mrs Liddell, will have further contacts on this question on the basis of those exchanges.
	As far as concerns corpus juris, I am unable to take the matter any further than the report to the House following discussion on that particular subject at Tampere. If anyone within the Foreign Office or Home Office has had discussions on this matter in the autumn post-Tampere, I hall write to the noble Lord.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question on the withholding tax. I ask my noble friend to ignore the customary xenophobic stance of those whose reaction would be the same whatever was said about the European Union, including my noble friend. Does my noble friend agree that, whether or not the present proposal is accepted, we all want tax evasion to be stopped and that it is better to do it through international co-operation? Very often we ourselves would be unable to achieve it if we just told the EU to get lost. Will my noble friend assure me and the House that we shall enter the suggested discussions in a better frame of mind than some of the opposition we have heard today?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his trenchant summary of some of the questions and comments which have been made. Of course he is right and I believe that he will know that the UK has been at the forefront of international discussions on fighting tax abuse and evasion, whether they have been in the OECD or elsewhere. The Government believe that the single most effective way of tackling those issues is through exchange of information on as wide an international basis as possible. In that respect it is not helpful that some countries, including some in the European Union, still maintain an outdated attachment to the kind of banking secrecy to which my noble friend referred. I am sure that we agree that that is where the real problem lies. The Government will certainly take the issue forward in the new round of discussions.

Lord Tebbit: My Lords, will the Minister agree that it was a piece of great good fortune that the disorders and fighting in Yugoslavia did not spill down through Macedonia and into Greece, as a member state of the Community? Does she further agree that the further the boundaries of the Community are expanded towards the Balkans and the East, the more at risk we become from such disorders? Will she say whether there are any legal barriers, or whether any legal barriers are proposed, to the use of the European defence force internally within the EU in support of the civil power?

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, at the time of the Kosovo crisis, we spoke on several occasions in your Lordships' House about the potential threat described by the noble Lord. I remember discussions being labelled along the lines of the so-called "domino theory"--an expression much used when the same sort of potentially difficult situation existed in South-East Asia 20 to 25 years ago. The noble Lord should perhaps be reassured by the fact that the stability pact is now taking root in the western Balkans and that organisations of that kind will, I hope, reduce the potential for conflagration, which he identified as a possibility as the boundaries of Europe spread, although I do not believe that that would necessarily create such a situation.
	I turn now to the question of the European rapid reaction force. I hope that we may call it by that name because I am trying to avoid any suggestion that it is a European army, as several noble Lords have tried to suggest. As I have made clear before, that idea is explicitly refuted in the conclusions of the summit. The noble Lord is not right to raise the spectre of that being a possible way of dealing with the situation. As I said when replying to an earlier question from a noble Lord, the situation is such that if, for example, there was a humanitarian crisis and NATO was not fully engaged, there might be a possibility of that happening. However, as the noble Lord will know, the organisation of, and the mandate for, that kind of force is in its early days. Although it is theoretically possible that some type of internal humanitarian crisis might prompt that kind of action, it is difficult to respond to a hypothetical situation.

Care Standards Bill

Debate on Second Reading resumed.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, this is a large Bill of some 98 clauses which introduces long-needed reforms in a number of vital areas. I join the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in thanking the Minister for his extremely crisp summary of its provisions. We all come to the debate today with a particular individual perspective. Although I could go through the Bill delivering a set of ticks and crosses against the various clauses, from these Benches I want to concentrate on a number of key items of principle which arise under the Bill. Like the Minister, I look forward to the speeches that will follow.
	First, there is the question of the regulation of independent acute healthcare. Concerns about the quality of healthcare in non-NHS hospitals are widely shared, not least by the more reputable and competent operators themselves, particularly in areas where there is a need for intensive care and areas such as cosmetic surgery. My noble friend Lady Nicholson can, sadly, bear personal testimony to that fact. I know that she will be making an important contribution to the debate today.
	Increasingly complex matters are now dealt with by private medicine. Half the abortions in this country are carried out by the private sector. Thirty per cent of psychiatric care is carried out in the private sector. After a period of stagnation between 1991 and 1997, private health insurance is growing again, no doubt prompted by the Government's lack of progress on waiting lists and waiting times in the NHS. Some 11 per cent of the population, or 3.5 million people, are now covered by private health insurance.
	It is clear that many private establishments dealing with elective surgery and acute medicine have particular problems. Most are smaller than any NHS hospital and have fewer than 100 beds. There is less medical supervision, fewer qualified nurses and, until recent proposals, less connection with clinical governance for their consultants who work within the NHS than there should be. Above all, there are concerns about the quality of intensive care in the independent sector, with patients often being shunted back to the NHS when there are complications. On these Benches we welcome the late conversion of the Department of Health to its responsibilities to ensure that standards in the private sector are adequate. It took the combined efforts of this House and the Health Select Committee to do so and, indeed, the efforts of my noble friend Lady Nicholson, "Panorama" and other media coverage to persuade the Government to bring the Bill forward.
	In evidence to the Select Committee, the former Secretary of State gave the view that quality in the sector was secured essentially by patients and management. There is now at least some recognition that the continuation of the purchaser/provider split inevitably means a mixed economy in healthcare, exactly as has been recognised in social care for some considerable period of time. One ideological blockage to proper regulation of standards in the private sector has therefore been overcome. Sadly, a further ideological blockage to which the Government have succumbed has yet to be overcome: the question of which body regulates the private sector.
	As a result of the Bill, through the powers given to the Secretary of State under Clause 21, there will be the anomalous situation where patients in NHS-pay beds and patients being treated at NHS expense in private beds may be subject to wholly different regulations and standards from those paying directly or through private health insurance for private treatment. There is absolutely no logic in having such separate standards. It means that the many NHS consultants who work in the private sector will potentially be subject to a wholly different set of standards depending on whether they work within the NHS, on NHS private beds, or in independent hospitals. The activities of doctors should be subject to the same standards wherever they work.
	The current proposals to include the regulation of independent acute hospitals within the national care standards commission is in many ways worse than the proposals the Government themselves put forward in June this year. At least then a separate regulator was envisaged. In their consultation document, Regulating Private and Voluntary Healthcare, they said:
	"There would be a single 'custom built' independent body charged with ensuring a common national approach to regulating private and voluntary healthcare. The new body and its inspection teams would have a clear focus on healthcare and the Commissions for Care Standards would be able to focus on their prime responsibility without the risk of being distracted by responsibility for acute healthcare. A dedicated national regulatory body would be better placed to develop the particular skills and expertise necessary for the regulation of private and voluntary healthcare. Ministers believe therefore that establishing a new regulatory body for private and voluntary healthcare is the right way forward".
	We have gone backwards since June. We do not believe that it is appropriate to regulate independent hospitals, including psychiatric hospitals, alongside care homes. Some 20,000 nursing and residential care homes will require to be regulated under the Bill. By contrast, the provision of healthcare is on a different scale: 230 independent acute hospitals and 64 independent psychiatric hospitals. It has been and still is our consistent view that the Commission for Health Improvement set up by the Health Act 1999 is the appropriate body to regulate the independent acute health care sector, on the basis of its fees in so doing being met by the independent sector. Of course it should. As my honourable friend Peter Brand proposed to the Health Select Committee, all patients in whatever establishment they are treated should at least have access to the Health Service Ombudsman.
	I turn to the national commission for care standards. Unlike the noble Earl, Lord Howe, we on these Benches greatly welcome the Government's decision to set up a single regulator in the form of the new commission in England for the provision of care, whether this is for the elderly, the adult vulnerable or with disabilities or children; or whether the homes are NHS run, private, voluntary sector or run by local authorities. This implements the Government's commitments made in their White Paper in November last year, but in a more coherent way with one national commission rather than several regional ones.
	We also welcome the proposal to make an adequate complaints system a pre-condition of registration. I believe that it is the most significant reform in social care for a generation and will affect hundreds of thousands of lives, not least 500,000 older people in care homes and 55,000 to 80,000 children in care at any time. We welcome the fact that its responsibilities will include monitoring standards, representing consumers and ensuring that care homes are measured against national benchmarks.
	However, we have a number of issues to raise in this connection. What philosophy informs the Government's regulation of care? Do they accept that where possible, domiciliary care is normally preferable to institutional care and that every effort should be made to allow people to remain independent within their own homes? Indeed, I welcome the Minister's indication of that in earlier comments.
	Why are establishments providing day care for the elderly not covered by the Bill's provisions other than in respect of their staff? Why have the draft regulations on standards for care homes been so slow in coming? The original report by the Centre for Policy on Ageing was produced in January this year. Why did it take the department nine months to issue a consultation paper? We are not waiting for the results of the consultation which will lead to regulations, but in the meantime the Government are trying to rush through the primary legislation.
	Above all, the Bill brings residential homes and nursing homes together in a common definition for the purposes of regulation. Pending the Government's long delayed decision on long-term care, do they expect as a result to means-test those within nursing homes as well as those within residential homes? When will they finally respond to the Royal Commission's report? Is it not high time that older people and their families had the security of knowing that they can afford residential care?
	As regards children, there is provision for the appointment of a children's rights director. Is that intended to be a step towards giving all children in care the right to advocacy? Many voluntary organisations are dedicated to achieving that and we on these Benches fully support their campaign.
	Furthermore, inspection can be a costly business. The report of the Social Services Inspectorate in 1992, Almost Half, pointed out that half the inspection units which it inspected failed to meet the statutory targets for frequency of inspections. At the end of the day, will there be adequate resources for new standards to be set and enforced? Currently, widely differing rates are set by local authorities up and down the country. Major disparities in rates will make it very difficult to achieve national standards.
	Thirdly, we welcome the setting up of the social care council and the follow-up to last year's White Paper in terms of improving standards in the workforce and giving it a wide range of registration, standards setting and education and training responsibilities, and also the proposal to protect the title of social worker.
	However, again, there are some issues to be addressed. How will the council be funded? Is it expected to break even purely through registration fees? How will that tie in with existing and proposed improved structures for self-regulation by healthcare professionals such as nurses, midwives, health visitors and healthcare assistants?
	The registration of social care workers is expected to come into effect in April 2002, while the new body for nursing, midwifery and health visiting--which is assumed also to include the regulation of healthcare assistants--is expected to come into effect in September 2001. How will those two lock together?
	Fourthly, we welcome the proposals relating to child-minders and children's day care and the transfer of regulatory responsibility to Ofsted. What additional resources will be required to carry out this work and when is it envisaged that the transfer will take place?
	Fifthly and finally, we welcome the proposal to set up a register of those considered unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults. But, again, how will this tie in with existing and proposed structures for self regulation by healthcare professionals? What will referable cases be? Will they lead to striking off from professional registers as well? Most importantly, what safeguards will there be for those referred? My honourable and noble friends raised concerns about that issue in relation to the child protection Bill, a similar piece of legislation, and I know that my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury intends to speak on it in the gap.
	Except for its treatment of independent acute healthcare, there is much in the Bill to commend. But as is so often the case with government Bills under this Government in particular, so much of its framework needs filling out before it can be judged properly. I have no doubt that we shall have an interesting and challenging Committee stage on our return in the new year, when I hope that the Minister will have more detail than is currently available.

Lord Laming: My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for his helpful introduction to this important Bill. I say "important" not particularly because of the new regulatory framework, which in general I welcome, or because of such matters as safeguarding the title of social worker, but because its measures are intended both to protect and to improve the quality of care of the most vulnerable people in our society. The services covered by the Bill range from those for very young children right through to the personal care of house-bound and perhaps even bed-bound elderly people. Each of those people will have special needs and, in their different ways, without the protection of the law they could be open to abuse, neglect or exploitation.
	It is right that as a society we should be judged by the effectiveness of the way in which we protect and care for people who have little ability to defend themselves. In an age of the geographical mobility of the workforce, resulting in fewer people living their lives in the place of their birth surrounded by a network of family and friends, it is even more important that all of us, but particularly relatives, can be assured that there is in place a robust range of safeguards of this kind.
	The Bill builds on the Protection of Children Act 1999 which your Lordships considered thoroughly in the last Session--sometimes too thoroughly for my own comfort! So the measures are long awaited and much the more welcome.
	It is particularly pleasing that in future all social care provision, irrespective of whether the provider is a public service, a voluntary body or a private agency, will be registered and inspected by the same criteria. For too long, independent organisations have understandably resented the fact that they have had to comply with standards enforced by local authorities, but not necessarily applied by local authorities to the services they provide.
	Furthermore, the Bill reinforces the need for the health services--not only hospitals--to work together in partnership with social care agencies. Yet I hope that in the understandable desire to get people out of hospital as soon as possible, there will remain a strong commitment to recuperation and rehabilitation so that unnecessary and inappropriate placements are not made. Undue haste at this critical stage can result in irreversible decisions which are not in the long-term interest of the patient. Without a proper needs assessment against an effective eligibility criteria, there will be no certainty of appropriate care.
	The Minister has set out the scope of the Bill, so I shall confine my comments to seeking further clarification on some of the points he raised. First, can he say why the local regulatory framework will not now be operated through eight regional organisations? The eight organisations were set out in the White Paper, but the framework will not be operated by the national care standards commission. I am not necessarily opposed to the proposal, but I and others have yet to understand the reason for the change.
	Secondly, I note that the national care standards commission will have a responsibility to promote good practice. That is all well and good, but can the Minister explain how it will relate to the work of the SSI, which has played such a large part in promoting good practice?
	Thirdly, the Secretary of State announced recently the creation of a social care institute of excellence. Can the Minister say how these different bodies will now work together?
	Fourthly, can the Minister say why the regulation of childminding is to be transferred to Ofsted? Many of the children in childminding facilities have special needs. How will good practice in childcare be maintained under these new arrangements?
	Fifthly, will the Minister note how much I and others welcome the amendment of the Children Act in order to bring small private homes into the regulatory framework?
	Sixthly, does the Minister agree, as has already been indicated, that Clause 2 relating to independent healthcare sits very uneasily with the rest of this Bill?
	The noble Lord the Minister explained in his introductory remarks why this Bill has been included, but can he say something about the range of staff and the special skills which will be needed in order to meet the requirements of such a wide-ranging clause which would cover such very differing facilities? Can the Minister say how this clause would not raise some of the other inconsistencies that have already been referred to?
	Seventhly, will the Minister confirm that whereas domiciliary care agencies need not register, nevertheless local authorities and the NHS can make arrangements only with those agencies which are registered?
	Finally, I warmly welcome the development of the general social care council and the sensible way in which registration will take place in an incremental manner. Is the Minister willing to pay a tribute to the work of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work and its director, Jennifer Bernard? I believe that in recent years the council has done an excellent job of work and has responded effectively to changes in social care services and in bringing training up to date.
	Overall, I hope that this Bill will attract the support of your Lordships' House and I look forward greatly to the contribution that will be made today by the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Culkein.

Lord MacKenzie of Culkein: My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I rise to make this speech, given the very few days that have passed since my introduction to your Lordships' House. However, the subject matter of this Bill--care standards--is something about which I care very much indeed. I hope that your Lordships will give me a few moments to say something about my background. Listening to debates over the last two weeks, it has been clear to me that there is a wealth of expertise in this House. Many professions and occupations appear to be well represented. However, I am told that I may be the first former serving lighthouse keeper to become a Member. What experience and expertise that will bring we shall see. I was brought up in the Scottish Lighthouse Service, where my father was a principal lighthouse keeper. In that service the standard was that only the best was good enough. Lives depended on that discipline and that ethos, and it was good conditioning for later life.
	However, apart from the three-year break when I served as a lighthouse keeper myself, I have been involved with nursing and the health service in one way or another from 1958 to 1993, both as a practising nurse and later working for the health service union COHSE. As a nurse, I am pleased to follow three distinguished nurses into your Lordships' House: they are the noble Baronesses, Lady Cox, Lady Emerton and Lady McFarlane of Llandaff, who I see is in her place this afternoon.
	In nursing, my speciality was in operating theatres and in trauma intensive care, where again nothing but the highest standards of care were acceptable. It is from that background that I have approached the debate today. I very much welcome the Care Standards Bill and I congratulate the Government on bringing it forward. It is long overdue.
	There are one or two areas on which I would wish to comment. First, I welcome the intention to establish a national care standards commission. The independent care sector, which includes voluntary agencies, private care homes, nursing homes and hospitals, as well as the "not for profit" organisations, has grown out of all recognition in the past 20 or so years. With that growth has come great change. No longer can voluntary organisations simply be described as "society's conscience", which was the term used by Lord Beveridge in 1942. Legislation in the past decade has seen a huge shift from local authority social services being providers of care to being instead purchasers of care.
	Independent sector organisations, as a consequence, have very often developed a contract culture, which does not always sit easily with a caring culture, particularly in the absence of national standards. In this mixed economy of welfare and personal care provision the independent sector has a much higher profile. There is a mixture of providers and there are different cultures, different organisational structures with a different legal status and different management and financial arrangements. But despite that, I suspect, rather than because of it, the standard of care in many establishments is good. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. It is right therefore that there is to be a national body responsible for the effective regulation of the full range of these services.
	I regard it as important that emphasis should be laid on national standards. Even a national service like the National Health Service sometimes struggles to achieve national standards: for example, we hear too much about "postcode care", the notion of which offends everything that I have ever been taught. But unless it is clear from the start that minimum standards are to be nationally determined, there will be an uphill struggle and the main thrust of this Bill may be lost.
	The independent sector does not deal just with social and personal care. Private hospitals, clinics and nursing homes come within the purview of this Bill. The National Health Service sends many patients to this sector. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister can tell the House whether there will be any consequential link or interface between the national care standards commission and, say, the health advisory service or the commission for health improvement. It is important that healthcare standards and clinical governance issues are covered, where relevant, as well as those relating to personal and social care.
	I would, secondly, want to turn to Part IV of the Bill, which deals with care councils in England, to be known as the general social care council: a measure which I unreservedly welcome. My former union, the Confederation of Health Service Employees, had a minority membership among social workers and social care staff. Some 13 years ago we developed a policy which called for the setting up of what we called a general social work council and we also called for legal protection for the title of "social worker".
	These policy initiatives did not find favour at the time. They were regarded as the idea of a bunch of nurses trying to teach social workers what to do. But these policies were developed by our social work membership. They were right then, and I welcome the Damascene conversions now.
	I am delighted to hear the Minister confirm that the GSCC will embrace the different levels of qualification to be held by staff working in social services and social care. I am glad that a mistake which was made in nursing will not be repeated here. I want to dwell on that, if I may, for a moment or two. The minimum entry requirements for nursing have inexorably increased over the past 40 years. Indeed, a substantial number of nurses, including many highly regarded senior nurses, presently in practice would not be allowed into the profession today. Nurse education is now firmly rooted in further and higher education, with appropriate entry gates. I have always supported the idea that there should be a level of nursing education in that sector.
	However, the downside of having one level of qualification is that it has led to a failure to address what I thought was a foreseeable restriction in the supply of practitioners. The result is a critical shortage of nurses in the National Health Service. I hope it is not too controversial to say that I believe the power struggle which caused these developments let the public down. The changes in nursing led to a conspicuous failure, in that unqualified staff are now undertaking what most of us know is the work of a registered nurse, without proper training and without any statutory mechanism for protecting the public from unsafe or incompetent practitioners. These grades of staff should have been kept within the aegis and purview of nursing.
	COHSE always believed in the objective of a wholly qualified nursing service, albeit with nurses trained to different levels of competence in the delivery of care. Crucially, we said that all such staff should be registered within the United Kingdom Central Council for Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors. Nurse leaders and politicians of the day thought otherwise, with the inevitable outcomes which are only now beginning to be addressed. Indeed, had that policy been taken on board it would not have been possible, for example, for nurses struck off the register for misconduct to reappear in another job as care assistants of one kind or another, usually in the private health sector. That does not protect the public and I hope that the social care council will resist any temptation to fall into the same trap of what might be described as "elitism", which can be a weakness rather than a strength.
	Thirdly, it appears from paragraph 137 of the Explanatory Notes that registration in the new GSCC will be incremental, with professional social workers being the first group to register. Can the Minister say whether I have understood correctly that once the majority in other groups in this diverse workforce is appropriately qualified, it will be brought into the register as a group rather than as individuals applying to register as soon as they qualify? If it is the group method of registration, I can understand the rationale, but perhaps only from a cost perspective. It does not appear to make sense from a public protection standpoint. If I have understood correctly, I hope that that matter can be revisited in Committee. I look forward to the Committee stage and to the legislation reaching the statute book. The measures set out will go a long way towards protecting the setting of standards and protecting some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
	Before I sit down, I say a heartfelt thanks to officers and staff of this House and to the many Members for the kindnesses and help given to me in the past couple of weeks.

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, it is a great pleasure and, indeed, an honour to follow such a distinguished speaker, who has put forward in his maiden speech to the House this afternoon such an extraordinary portfolio of expertise and knowledge about this subject. It is a great pleasure to be able to welcome him as a maiden speaker, but it is an even greater pleasure to know that we can look forward to a long period in which he will deploy his skill and wisdom in your Lordships' House on a wide variety of topics associated not only with healthcare but, I am quite sure, other subjects also.
	Of course, I am bound to feel that the noble Lord was well educated when I see that he attended the Nicholson Institute in Stornaway. It just has to be right. None the less, as a half-Scot--and, unfortunately, I cannot claim any more than that--I have to recognise that for many generations education in Scotland has been somewhat better than that in England. I do not know about Wales. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Culkein, demonstrates that level of expertise and education from the very start of his life. When one looks at his career path, one sees that he has worked his way up the ladder, which means that he truly knows what he is talking about. That is what came through so very powerfully in his remarks this afternoon.
	I begin to feel sorry for the Front Bench because the noble Lord identified so clearly so many of the issues that the Care Standards Bill presents with regard to private healthcare regulation. He has felt from the beginning of his life that only the best is good enough. He quite rightly ended his remarks by implying that only the best was good enough for the most vulnerable people in our society, whom this whole Bill addresses. I thank him most warmly for his words. I support his views on the right to have a national body for regulation and on the interface between public and private healthcare because of the modern mixture which he has identified so clearly.
	I want to start my own remarks by referring to the staff of the private health sector which, of course, is a matter on which the noble Lord has already touched and an issue which is so well known to him. Because it is the easiest thing to do, I quote from a nurse who wrote to me, stating:
	"My experience with Intensive care in the private sector led me to resign my post within 3 months as I felt sure that one day I would inherit a disaster that was not of my making and there would be no support available. My role in this private hospital ... was that of a bank nurse"--
	that means someone who is hired, an agency nurse--
	"but the permanent staff working in the 2 bedded HDU [high dependency unit] were virtually all untrained and had little concept of the implications of accepting responsibility for their sick patients".
	She goes on to highlight the point that,
	"the consultants using the facilities of ... private hospitals have NHS commitments and it is to the ICU [intensive care unit] in those hospitals that they bring their patients when they run into trouble".
	Another nurse wrote to me following the "Panorama" programme to which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred. She wrote:
	"Lately I have been doing agency work and have been hired out to private units ... despite the National Association of Theatre Nurses' efforts to raise awareness of patient care and employee vulnerability".
	She said that she found that worrying circumstances still existed after she retired from an earlier post at a private facility. With regard to staff vulnerability, she wrote:
	"The situation I refer to is that of surgeons who arrive to carry out major surgery and rely upon the theatre staff to act as their assistants. Major surgery such as hip replacements, spinal operations, major abdominal surgery ... all carried out virtually single-handed. In the NHS the consultant would expect to have at least one if not two or even three assistants for such operations. And they need them. Good assistance is crucial to the speedy and efficient execution of such surgery. Making do with nurses--albeit informed and obliging--is just not the same".
	A doctor wrote to me:
	"In my experience many of these private hospitals are badly run and ... some of the consultants working in them are not at all mindful of their post-operative responsibilities. In many of these private hospitals the nursing care lacks continuity and is haphazard, the management relying upon temporary, agency and stand-by nursing staff. There is often a complete lack of communication between the different shifts and between the nurses and the consultants. I have seen auxiliary nurses doing the work of staff nurses and sisters".
	The critical part of this Bill comes before the House as only secondary legislation. Of course, the primary legislation which it offers is weaker than the legislation it seeks to replace. The current Act provides for inspection twice yearly, even though private hospitals are registered only as nursing homes; none the less, they have to be inspected twice yearly and one visit has to be unannounced. This Bill offers only one visit, presumably pre-arranged.
	Today the Minister has declared that, although it is not on the face of the Bill, there is to be a separation of regulatory authority; that there will be expert investigators; that there will be proper staffing, and so on. However, I ask him whether these key promises will be on the face of the Bill or whether they will be decided behind closed doors. Decisions taken behind closed doors will not help those staff to whom I have just referred; and, of course, they will not help the patients either.
	The evidence of need is very clear. We are talking about situations where there are unqualified or under-qualified staff who take on medical responsibilities for which they do not have the training. It is unfair to place those responsibilities on them. There is no complaints procedure in the private hospital provisions; or, at the very least, there is a complaints provision, but it is one that cannot be triggered by the patient, the patient's family or, I presume, the staff. Then, as has already been mentioned, some staff work in the private sector when they are forbidden to work in the National Health Service. There are misleading advertisements; for example, hospitals advertise that they employ trained and retrained staff, yet that is not always so. When it is not so, to whom does the public complain? The Advertising Standards Authority is not a statutory body. Some of the worst abuses of patient trust come from the highest earning parts of the private sector.
	I have already referred to the lack of staff in the operating theatres. Many of the intensive care units should not be called "intensive care units" in that they do not have the necessary resident anaesthetist or highly qualified staff. The risks to patients in many of those private hospitals rise so inexorably that patients lose their lives unnecessarily or unnecessarily early.
	I have received many letters and messages, and many examples of tragic cases have come across my desk in recent weeks. Those letters, messages and calls have mirrored the horrors described in July this year to the Select Committee on Health in another place. As a result, last week the Government published a Green Paper which made many recommendations. Having inherited the National Health Service, which is so hard-working, tattered at the edges and under-funded, the Government have responded to the need to drive up standards by establishing the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), which we all welcome.
	But, to put it bluntly, why are the Government so ready to establish NICE for the public sector and put in place nothing like it for the private sector? I remind the Government that nearly 1 million people have operations in the private sector every year. Of course, it is not as such a business sector at all, but 230 individual hospitals. It does not provide healthcare for love or as a public service; these hospitals and medical staff provide healthcare for money. Therefore, these private hospitals are exceptionally competitive. To drive down their costs, they have hired staff who are inadequately trained, under-provisioned, under-funded and not supported sufficiently for the tasks that they are asked to undertake.
	Can the Minister say why he has made no commitment to clinical excellence in the private sector? I go further and ask him why it has deliberately been excluded from the Bill. Noble Lords may not have read as clearly as I have Clause 7, which sets out the general duties of the NCSC as monitoring the availability and quality of services, supporting consumers and encouraging the development of better services. What could be more welcome than that? However, subsection (7) of Clause 7 states:
	"In this section, 'Part II services' means services of the kind provided by persons registered under Part II other than the provision of ...
	(b) listed services (as defined in section 2)".
	That means that the Government have declared that the commission shall have the general duty of encouraging improvement and the quality of Part II services provided in England, except for private hospitals and private healthcare. Why? I do not understand. Something must be wrong. After all, only in June 1998, the Government declared that national benchmarks would be set for each hospital treatment and would form the basis of targets for every hospital. That is why in my Private Member's Bill I have proposed that an independent regulatory authority shall regulate the provision of private health services by institutions in England and Wales so that such services shall be equivalent to those provided in the National Health Service.
	I am not suggesting that they should be higher. I accept that the Government have so much on their hands with managing the NHS. None the less it is difficult to understand why the establishment of clinical excellence is not something that the Government wish to achieve for those patients who accept treatment for which they pay on the spot as opposed to paying through the tax system. After all, this year the Government, in their statement on the establishment of NICE, declared,
	"The Government believes high quality health services should be available for all. At present there are unacceptable variations in the quality of care available to different patients in different parts of the country. The Government is determined that this shall change".
	However, the Government are determined that that shall not change for those who choose to receive healthcare outside the National Health Service. I do not understand that.
	The Bill does not provide for clinical audits and says that there has to be a report each year on every hospital, but it does not say on what facets of the hospital's work. Yet with regard to NICE and clinical audits, the Government state:
	"Health professionals need to be able to assess the care they give against established clinical standards. This can be done through clinical audit, which allows them to look at what they are doing against agreed standards and, where necessary, make changes to practice".
	What could be fairer than that, unless you have the misfortune to go to, or to be sent to, a private hospital? Let us remember that hundreds of thousands of National Health Service patients have operations in private hospitals at the request or the behest of the National Health Service, which simply cannot cope with all the demands due to what modern health provision can offer and which consumers therefore demand.
	The public would be appalled if they knew that the Government cared only for public health when that health provision is given in a public ward. I believe that the Department of Health is responsible for the health of the nation, and not just for a part of the nation's health. The public have the right to expect that private hospitals should come under the same umbrella. There cannot be two standards. There should not be two standards, yet that is what this Bill offers.
	Of course, the public mistakenly believe that if they "go private" the standards will be higher. We know that to be wrong. My argument is that it is unfair, unethical and unacceptable that there should deliberately be two standards of care in the United Kingdom. I call on the Government to accept a basic upward drive for consumer standards, irrespective of the mechanism of payment. I look forward to this Bill and I look forward to private health provision being placed, where it belongs, within the remit of the Health Standards Commissioner as he has requested.

Lord Rix: My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I hope that my voice stands the course. I believe that this is a landmark Bill to drive up standards in social services and to offer new safeguards to service users. Children and adults with learning disabilities are typically frequent and intensive users of social services. They have been at the sharp end of the kinds of failures that the Bill seeks to address.
	It is easy to talk in the abstract about problems with quality, failure to meet standards, training deficits and inspection loopholes, but it is important to remember the effects of such problems on people's lives. I make no apology for referring to some of the unpalatable inquiry findings which provide the background to this legislation. Before party politics really get underway, I believe it is important to spell out to the House just how crucial is legislation of this kind.
	A most recent and most graphic depiction of failure in the care of adults with learning disabilities was in the BBC television series "Macintyre Undercover", in which an investigative journalist worked in a residential care home and witnessed a catalogue of abuse and neglect. Footage included a resident being pulled from her chair by her hair to be forcibly restrained by several staff. Another is seen being restrained by having his head pushed to the floor by a carer using her foot. Carers were also shown hitting and punching residents.
	As we approach the next century we should be duty-bound to promote values of dignity and respect. Treating people with learning disabilities as lesser human beings is quite intolerable.
	While inspections of the home in question had taken place, it was all too easy for staff to pull the wool over the inspector's eyes. That is borne out by recent social services indicators which demonstrated that local authority inspections have been poorly timetabled, and in some cases neglected altogether, and have often been more concerned by the size of rooms and the number of fire extinguishers than by the welfare of the residents.
	The BBC film was also revealing in its depiction of the struggle that relatives and carers face when trying to get hold of information to influence their choice of home. While posing as a family member looking for a place for a relative in residential care, the reporter approached social services to ask for information. He was told that any allegations which may exist against the home would be "confidential" and could not be disclosed.
	Clause 6 of the Bill proposes to establish a national care standards commission, which will be responsible for the proper registration and thorough inspection of residential care homes and other establishments. The commission will have a general duty of encouraging improvement in the quality of the services it oversees, and will have a duty to make information about services available to the public. This is truly good news. But let us not wait for the Care Standards Bill to be fully implemented before action is taken: the work needs to begin immediately. Indeed, I believe that a moral question has been raised by the BBC holding back the Macintyre report so that the programme would have the necessary effect when it was transmitted and his other investigations would not be revealed. There is a moral issue there which, possibly, needs addressing.
	I would be delighted to see these duties enshrined in law. Bringing registration and inspection under the jurisdiction of a single body independent of all providers should help to bring consistency, efficiency and transparency to the process. I look forward to the work of a commission with a policy of consulting widely. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider the appointment of a director for disabled people, as well as a director for children's rights, to champion improvements in the care of individuals with disabilities.
	The scope of the commission is broad. It will cover some of the substantial gaps which have hitherto existed in various registration and inspection regimes. Home care will now be registered, which is something I warmly welcome, and I would encourage a limited inspection role to be developed subject to the service users' approval. The status of adult placements will also be formalised in the new legislation. This should help to confine to history cases such as the one last year in North Devon where an establishment with fewer than four residents fell between two stools of classification, allowing horrific abuse to go unchecked.
	Other care settings, such as children's respite care centres run by health authorities, will now come under the law. In the past, this kind of provision has not been subject to regulation and instances of abuse and neglect have emerged. Only last week a highly critical report was released regarding a Nottinghamshire care centre for disabled children. Fortunately, this centre is one of the more positive stories, having now undergone a transformation with a new management structure and new staff appointed at the respite unit for children with severe learning and physical disabilities.
	For the first time, child minders and pre-school provision will come under a framework of inspection; as will independent schools and colleges. I would expect monitoring in these settings to look at the support for children with special educational needs and, in the context of pre-school establishments, procedures for the early identification of special educational needs.
	But despite a radical overhaul of the system, there are still, as we have already heard, a substantial number of care settings that are not covered--most notably, day services for adults with learning disabilities, such as day centre attendance. While we are slowly seeing some success in getting people with learning disabilities into work, there is still a substantial number of people for whom day centre attendance is the norm every week. Those who attend may require quite intensive care from staff over a substantial period.
	Physical and emotional abuse is not confined to residential settings. Vulnerable people who are unable to speak up for themselves can be just as isolated at a day centre, as in a residential home. A case in point is the Woodfold day centre in Sheffield--now fortunately closed--where people who attended were abused and neglected over a 14-year period. Abuse should be stamped out regardless of the setting in which it occurs.
	Another gap is in the protection of disabled young people between the ages of eight and 17. The legislation recognises that staff working in care settings with disabled young people up to the age of 17 should be properly vetted, but there is no provision for the registration and inspection of day services for children over the age of eight. I urge the Government to rectify this matter--not for the sake of consistency of legislation, but for the sake of young disabled people, who may still be exposed to settings in which those purported to care for them are not bound by legislation governing their conduct.
	One final gap in registration is in relation to hospices. Some of our most sick and vulnerable young and elderly people reside in hospices, which are establishments designed to maintain patients' dignity through the latter stages of terminal illness. Measures should be in place to ensure that the care ethos of the hospice movement is a reality in every single case.
	In terms of inspection procedures, I would expect inspection teams to be well trained in seeking the views of people with learning disabilities--allowing for full support in the interview situation, where necessary. In some cases, it may be beneficial to consult with parents and carers, too. They may be in a position to speak out about physical abuse or best recognise signs of emotional distress. It is fundamentally important that medical examinations can be made and medical records consulted in all cases where abuse is suspected, unless the individual registers discontent.
	We need a working policy of zero tolerance of physical and sexual abuse. That is why I welcome the new provisions in Clause 18 for the urgent revocation of registration where it appears there is a serious risk to a person's life, health or well-being.
	The decision to devise national minimum standards applicable to care establishments is, I think, a good one, although care will need to be taken to ensure that they are not general to the point of being ineffectual. I would advocate learning disability national minimum standards, alongside standards for older people, mental health service users and other groups. I would particularly urge the Government to look at minimum standards for restraint, whether in children's services, residential schools or in adult homes.
	The restraint procedures demonstrated in the BBC's recent film and documented in countless abuse inquiries are not only painful, distressing and demeaning to residents; they are also life threatening. Mencap is aware of fatalities arising from improper restraint, which have been recorded as "accidental death". Death by asphyxiation is no accident. A clear legal and policy framework is urgently required on the management of physical intervention. We would also expect people with learning disabilities who have experience of using these services to be directly consulted in drawing up any standards that will affect their lives.
	Proper registration and inspection procedures will go a long way in driving up standards in care, but it is also crucially important to have an effective structure for monitoring and approving staff who work in care settings. Sadly, too many care workers are inadequately trained for the job that they have to do, and there is little concentration on the quality and value of care provided. This demonstrates the importance of the proposed general social care council, which should, in time, ensure that all staff have relevant qualifications and training.
	During the last Session, I extended my support, along with other noble Lords, to a Private Member's Bill introduced in the other place by Debra Shipley MP, which has now become the Protection of Children Act. This Act received support from Members on all sides of both Houses who were keen to strengthen recruitment procedures for people appointed to work with children. I am delighted that the Care Standards Bill is building upon the foundation of that Act, and is looking to strengthen procedures for the recruitment of staff working with adults who are judged to be vulnerable on account of their care requirements. This is an important step, and one which is long overdue.
	Eighteen months ago the Department of Health concluded an inquiry into Longcare homes, two privately run residential homes for people with learning disabilities in Buckinghamshire. More than 50 people suffered physical and sexual assaults at the hands of the owner, Gordon Rowe, and his staff. Rowe registered the home in 1983, when he was already under investigation for abuse allegations in a different local authority. This information did reach Buckinghamshire local authority, but it failed to act upon it. This case stresses the importance of ensuring that staff are properly vetted to prevent perpetrators from moving from one part of the country to another to seek employment, or from one care setting to another thus avoiding detection.
	Lessons learnt need to be translated into action. Sadly there have been all too many inquiries of this kind up and down the country. Now is the time to protect for the future. I welcome the Department of Health's commitment to taking a strong national lead in response to national problems, and I look forward to a future for people with learning disabilities which looks very different from the past. Proportionately, the same number of adults with a severe learning disability are living with parents in 1999 as were living with parents 30 years ago in 1969. There simply have to be better guarantees that those who leave the family home to live elsewhere will find support and opportunity and, above all, complete safety.

Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, like many of your Lordships I feel that I have been waiting a long time for this Bill. In some senses, I feel that I have been waiting more than 30 years, since I started my professional life as a very green, very naive and very unregulated social worker in Manchester's Moss Side. Your Lordships will appreciate that working in such surroundings I did not remain naive for long.
	Life in social care has changed a great deal since then. For a start, we use the words "social care". Then, we might have referred to "social work" as our profession, but social services departments were not yet even a gleam in anyone's eye and "social care", although it was going on all around us, was not yet a recognised term. More shockingly--I am ashamed still to admit it--many of the problems which face social services departments now were simply not on the agenda. Principal among those was the issue which now forms such a significant part of all social care; namely, the protection of children from abuse in all its forms. My blood still runs cold when I remember all those children who were undoubtedly suffering but whose plight was ignored by me and by those authorities that were charged with protecting them.
	I am thankful indeed that much has changed and want to pay tribute to all those who have devoted so much of their lives to providing good social care, often in the face of criticism, and frequently pilloried by the press.
	The Bill itself is wide ranging and we shall have the opportunity to debate many important aspects of social care provision and its regulation during its passage. It is, I think, particularly appropriate that it begins its passage in the House of Lords as so many of your Lordships have an abiding interest in these matters, as has been evidenced by the speeches today. Today, however, I want to concentrate on one aspect only and in doing so to declare a specific interest.
	Part IV of the Bill concerns the functions and provisions of the general social care council (GSCC) and the care council for Wales. I am privileged to chair the advisory group which has been established to advise the Secretary of State and to conduct projects of work to help with the early development of the key functions of the GSCC when it is established. The membership of the group is drawn from a wide cross-section of those who are concerned with these developments. I want to record my most grateful thanks to all members of this group for their commitment to so much hard work in order to prepare for the establishment of a body which is so long awaited. I add my thanks to those of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for the work done by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work.
	The group I chair is undertaking initial work on drafting codes of conduct for social care staff and employers and a framework by which codes of practice for staff can be developed. We shall also examine the registration functions of the GSCC, its regulation of professional social work education and training, and the establishment of the body in shadow form during the course of the next year, depending on the progress of this legislation.
	Like many other people who have worked in this field, I have awaited the formation of such a council for a long time. I first heard it discussed as long as 20 years ago. We greeted each report which recommended its establishment with eagerness and support, but each time we were disappointed.
	Over 1 million people are employed in personal social services in the United Kingdom, providing social work and social care services for large numbers of children and adults, including many elderly people. They work often on their own initiative, in people's own homes, and away from direct supervision. They provide support and care for children and adults who may be physically or intellectually dependent, and who often suffer disadvantage, stigma and social exclusion. Many service users rely on social workers and social care staff to provide their day-to-day personal care, look after their interests, protect them from harm, or prevent them becoming a danger to themselves or to others. The circumstances which bring them into contact with social care services may also make them particularly vulnerable to misconduct, bad practice or abuse on the part of staff in those services.
	It therefore seems incredible that up to now no government have been willing to set up such a body as exists in most other professional and caring fields with the task of protecting the public by regulating standards of conduct and practice for those working in the field. There has, of course, been growing public concern in recent years about examples of gross misconduct, bad practice and abuse by a minority-- I stress that it is a minority--of social care workers. Naturally, support has grown for a concerted initiative to raise standards, and to tackle abuse and bad practice.
	The primary function of the councils--I refer also to the council for Wales--will be to protect the public and set standards for the professional and occupational groups working in the social services field, whether in local authorities, voluntary organisations or the private sector. The councils will have the heavy task of winning the confidence of service users, their carers and families by the way they set the standards and the way in which those standards are enforced. Therefore, the councils must secure the commitment of all those who work in social care to high standards of conduct and practice. They must also gain the co-operation of employers in providing support for good practice, tackling misconduct and abuse, and excluding from the workforce those in serious breach of the standards.
	The councils must also work with education and training bodies to raise standards and increase levels of training. Of course, they must also take steps to improve public understanding of the nature of social work and social care, and to build public confidence in social services and the occupational groups working within them. These are not easy tasks but there is a will to tackle them if the advisory group which I chair is anything to go by.
	I should like to draw particular attention to one part of the councils' work which I believe is of the greatest importance; namely, the empowerment of service users. Although many social services departments and agencies have made serious attempts to address the issue of user participation, most users would say that there is still a long way to go. This partly reflects the inherent difficulty for all organisations of giving up power and reducing control, even when their philosophies and values embrace the principle of being responsive to users. However, we must never forget that it is also a particular feature of social care that many of the groups which use its services comprise those who are disadvantaged and disempowered as a result of what took them into the social care field in the first place; namely, as a result of youth or old age; learning or communication disabilities; and, of course, racial, religious or cultural differences. Such groups have few opportunities to have their say or to influence decisions. All too often, in social care as in the wider society, their views are dismissed or ignored.
	The councils therefore will have an important part to play in encouraging a climate of greater responsiveness to users and their families, but they will also have obstacles to overcome to secure real user and carer ownership of their own operations. It will be of the utmost importance that provision is made for users and lay members to be in the majority on the councils. We shall need assurances from the Minister that he is totally committed to ensuring that this works in practice as well as in theory.
	One million social care workers will not be registered and regulated instantly, but this long-awaited Bill makes a vital start. There can be no one who is concerned about this important issue who does not welcome that.

Baroness McFarlane of Llandaff: My Lords, I am sure your Lordships will not be surprised that I wish to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Culkein, on his magnificent maiden speech. Rarely have I listened with such pleasure to a maiden speech. I enjoyed the way in which he stated the personal values with which he comes to the work of the House and also his authoritative analysis of the terms of the Bill.
	I am gratified to think that nursing is now represented on almost all of the Benches of this House. That is right and proper when one considers the work that nurses undertake in the health service. I was almost tempted to appropriate to myself the words, "Lord, now letteth thou thy servant depart in peace". I feel that the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, will represent us with skill and authority in the future.
	The Government are to be congratulated on their determination to grasp the nettle of care standards in a wide range of settings. I welcome the intention to establish the national care standards commission to regulate social care and private and voluntary healthcare.
	Most of us have a profound sense of shame as we encounter and read of flagrant abuses of the trust of care-- we have heard these referred to very graphically by the noble Lord, Lord Rix--but the reported cases may be only the tip of an iceberg. I believe that there is a far greater quantity of substandard and even abusive care which remains hidden and which can lead to days and years of misery and a life lived out with a lack of human dignity or worse.
	Some of us have had cause to visit institutions which give us profound unease as we enter them; their ambience depresses us beyond measure. Whereas I appreciate some of the evidence brought forward by he noble Earl, Lord Howe, about the dilemma in which nursing and residential home owners find themselves because of some of the standards which are to be brought in, the physical provision for care is extremely important. Even though the inmates of a home may spend only a certain time in bedrooms, there needs to be room for two nurses to operate around a bed and for all the common provisions for caring to be made. I see a need for far more stringent standards in physical provision than we have had before. There is also a need for standards of staffing in homes. These have fallen way below the level at which they should be.
	As we cast a critical eye on some of these institutions, I am conscious of how grateful some of us should be for the excellent provision of care in others. I have visited places where the standards of care are exemplary. I am sure that, like me, many of your Lordships will have cause to be personally grateful for the care received by members of our own family circles. My mother lived until she was 108. For the last 10 years of her life she received marvellous care in a home in Leicester which I could not better myself. I should like to pay tribute to the care that is given in so many of these homes.
	I am also intensely proud of the care given in the hospice movement and the standards that have been set there. The care given in our hospices could well be a model for the care given in the health and social services generally.
	From my background, I want to comment on four aspects of the Bill in general terms. We shall have the opportunity to return to the Bill in detail as we go through the clauses at the Committee stage and beyond as we discuss the Bill. First of all, I should like to comment on the range of the Bill. The Minister said that it was very broad. I was staggered as I read of the range of provisions that it covers: the variety of settings, institutions and domiciliary care; the way in which it covers every age group, from children right through to the elderly; the settings of short-term and long-term care; and the provision for not only physical care but for mental care and terminal care.
	I begin to wonder what kind of commission would be competent to encompass this wide range of kinds of care, with the very different standards that will have to be added to different forms of care. Speaking from the point of view of my own profession of nursing, if we are to have the promised concentration of expertise in the commission, how does one get a concentration of expertise that will cover geriatric nursing, mental health nursing, palliative care, mental handicap nursing, children's nursing and so on? These are all specialties in nursing that will come under the purview of the commission. How does one get that concentration of expertise?
	My second and major concern is to probe the distinction made in the Bill between social care and healthcare. In the past the distinction has been invidious. My hope would have been that the Government would have given this matter more thought. It is my view that for many nurses the distinction between social care and healthcare is artificial and that the Bill with its definitions could lead to further polarisation between these aspects of care.
	It is my experience that persons requiring long-term social care often have a multiplicity of health needs; and those requiring healthcare have social needs. It is invidious to attempt to polarise these kinds of needs for care and to designate people to institutions accordingly.
	The definitions of personal care form a fundamental element in what is, by definition, part of basic nursing care. Henderson described it many years ago as,
	"to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to a peaceful death) that he would perform unaided had he the necessary strength, will or knowledge, and to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence".
	As has been said, much of this is now carried out by care assistants and yet it is a basic nursing task. It needs to come under the purview of experienced nurses who can assess the need for nursing care and monitor it effectively. We have slipped up in the way in which care has been organised in some of these institutions at present. This basic nursing role is a necessary element in what makes a person feel cared for, and it needs to be under the supervision of qualified nurses. If personal care and healthcare are distinguished too finely, the care of the individual is fragmented and becomes task centred rather than person centred--and yet we have had the assurance from the Minister that this is not the objective.
	That leads on to the distinction between residential homes and nursing homes. There is an implication in the Bill that long-term care is about social care and that nursing homes are about healthcare. I know that the Royal College of Nursing has long been of the view that the patient's interest would best be served by removing that artificial distinction and moving to a single system of homes. I wonder why the Government have not taken advantage of this opportunity to take that step.
	Noble Lords have already referred to the overlap in regulatory functions. As has already been said, I believe that there is an overlap between the function of a commission, between CHIMP and NICE, clinical governance and many other forms of regulating the quality of care. I wonder whether we can have clarification of how these different institutions will relate to one another and to the professional organisations. We have already had reference to how they will relate to the commission in their responsibility for professional practice.
	I now turn to a small point. The Bill states that a person's employment in some homes would be prohibited unless he or she is registered with the social work agency. But many nurses will be working in the institution. Does that mean that the Government want them to have dual registration as nurses and with the social work agency? We look forward to the future stages of the Bill and being able to take up these and other points.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, this Second Reading debate, with the excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, gives us all the opportunity to put on record our appreciation of the hard work carried out by so many social care staff throughout the country.
	In our rightful condemnation of that small minority of people in the social care workforce who truly neglect and abuse those in their charge, it is sometimes left unsaid that many in the care workforce bring relentless dedication and compassion to their work, often on ridiculously low wages. They will welcome the opportunity that this Bill gives to improve further their levels of care and professionalism.
	The Care Standards Bill will also be heartily welcomed by the half-million people living in care homes in England and Wales, including elderly people, disabled people and children in children's homes. We are told that there are over 30,000 care homes and over 1,000 children's homes as well as hundreds of smaller children's homes, private and voluntary hospitals, and clinics. The Bill will also cover 3,000 domiciliary care agencies, 70 residential family centres, 80 independent fostering agencies and 44 adoption agencies.
	The new national care standards commission will replace a plethora of confusing and differing regulatory regimes and, in some cases, bring regulation where there was none before. This is part of the Bill that is long overdue and one that I hope will be welcomed, at least in its aims, across the House.
	It is a disturbing thought that of the 1 million-strong care workforce, only 20 per cent have any recognised training qualification at all. In the context of the Bill, that yawning gap in standards will be filled by the general social care council, which will at last promote the highest training standards across this diverse workforce and not only, as we have heard from noble Lords, among the relatively small number of professionally trained social workers numbering 40,000 in all.
	Part VI is an important section of the Bill which imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to maintain a list of individuals who are considered unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults in the care sector. The imposition of this duty to strike off those who would abuse and mistreat our most vulnerable citizens is a reflection of the seriousness with which this Government take the care of the most defenceless among us.
	While the Bill covers the entire age range, perhaps I may linger for a moment on our duty as civilised citizens to our elderly people. We know that the care of the elderly must from now on attract only ultra-professionalism. Why? It is because, first of all, people in their 70s, 80s, 90s or 100s, after a lifetime of working and giving, deserve our respect. It is also because the demography of our country and continent is changing. Thankfully, people are living longer with, in many but not all cases, increasing disposable income. They are demanding higher and better standards of care in retirement. They are looking to a varied and fulfilling retirement and, as always, professionalism is ultimately much cheaper and much more cost-effective than incompetence.
	Care of the elderly should be the new "rock and roll", attracting the most original thinking and the greatest energy in policy and cultural terms. What could be more exciting, liberating and revolutionary, as we step into the new millennium, than the real prospect of a peaceful and prosperous old age for all. It is a prospect that needs a great deal of work and commitment because a significant proportion of elderly people feel less than confident that such a benign retirement and period in care awaits them.
	My own family has taken the all too familiar route which, I am sure, is known to many of us, of traipsing from one residential care home to another looking for a suitable home, in our case, for an elderly widowed aunt who had become very confused. The variation in standards, hygiene, personal space, care and warmth was surprising, if not shocking. Although my aunt is now happily established in an excellent home, the at times harrowing process of finding that home for her was an education we could have all done without.
	While this Bill calls for more detailed content, which will be forthcoming, it will help to restore confidence among our elderly citizens and others in care that their welfare and well-being is uppermost on this Government's agenda.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, the theme of this afternoon's debate has been the commission, and concerns that it will not have regional arms. Perhaps I may make a suggestion to the Government that each commissioner should be encouraged to spend one or two hours a week in the field in a psychiatric hospital or a special needs school in order to keep in touch with what is happening on the ground.
	My father took immense comfort from spending his last illness at home. I wholeheartedly welcome this Bill's measures to allow the cared for to remain at home rather than being obliged, for the convenience of bureaucracy, to move to an institution.
	By far the majority of the workers I have met, while volunteering for work in hostels, are committed to it. However, there are also the few who might never be allowed a position of responsibility elsewhere and enjoy the exercise of power over others. There are also those who take personally the problems with conduct that cared-for young homeless people sometimes have and who respond inappropriately and unkindly.
	That is very distressing for the colleagues of such people and, most importantly, it leaves the cared for feeling badly about themselves. Therefore, I also welcome the encouragement given to training and registration which the general councils covering social and care workers provided in this Bill will introduce. I hope that this legislation will cause the most obviously flawed candidates for care work to be rejected outright or at least prevent them from rising to a position of responsibility. After all, some of the homeless are 16 and 17 year-olds; they are still children, and 40 per cent of those children have spent time in care. They are vulnerable, and there are Napoleons among hostel staff just as there are in other social care work situations. Proper inspection and registration of hostels, registration of the staff as "social care workers", an expectation that they should be "fit persons" and at least trained to NVQ level 3 will increase the standard of care and staff morale.
	I fear that I have missed a page of my notes. Those remarks were to suggest to the Minister that homeless hostels should also be included in the new arrangements set out in the Bill, at least for young people up to the age of 21. Their carers and staff in the hostels should have to have at least the same level of skills as those demanded in other residential settings for vulnerable people.
	Children's homes are failing their children. Perhaps the most disturbing figures reflecting this are that one-quarter of young women are leaving care with babies, and one-half are mothers within two years, as compared to the one in 25 women normal to that age. Research by Centrepoint and the Peabody Trust, Safe in the City, shows that the most important predictor for youth homelessness in deprived areas is to be the child of a mother whose firstborn was produced before she was 25 years old. The prospects for many of the children of recent care leavers must be bleak, both for their children and their children's children.
	Those with experience and expertise in the care of looked-after children say that the most important goal is a good quality of relationship between staff and children. It is essential to retain staff over several years, to resist children being removed from one home to another, and to foster trusting, significant relationships. Children need to feel connected to adults who really do care about them.
	What aids children to connect? Two things do this: the continuity of contact with staff; and its significance. Children who have never felt secure with their parents or guardians need to know that staff will stick with them for years; that at least one staff member will allow intimacy; and that they can communicate their feelings and sometimes dreadful past experiences without threatening that special relationship. How can a child ask for help if there is no one he can trust or feel standing close to him? However, the problem is that children who have been poorly treated are likely to treat others poorly, especially their new carers.
	In a crisis, when one is faced with an impulse, one is of course tempted to act upon it. If it is a destructive impulse, one has to pause, think for a moment, and recognise the damaging consequences of gratifying that impulse. When caring for troubled children, one must resist responding to insults with insults, kicks with kicks, and seduction with seduction. The capacity to stand back and think is essential. By insisting that the managers of children's homes are properly trained and by moving towards the training of all staff working in children's homes, the Bill is encouraging a considered approach among staff. However, because of the exceptional needs of these particular children, it needs to go further still. There remains the danger that workers will lose their self-possession. The saddest example of this is when a young homeless person with conduct problems is expelled from a hostel because workers are unable to plot the most constructive way around him.
	I have been very impressed with the results of supporting hostel staff by providing weekly meetings with a psychotherapist. Fewer young people are expelled and there is a greater enthusiasm among staff for their work. The meetings stimulate the care staff to think about their practice, to question their behaviour and to better understand the young people they care for--their wards. The service allows some staff to see that there is an infinite amount to learn from their work. Virtually unqualified staff have gone on to write masters' theses on the relationships between staff and residents. The residents are very grateful to have found a place in which they feel accepted and understood. Young people who can recite a litany of previous hostels come, at last, to rest.
	In Committee, I intend to move an amendment to ensure the following provision: that the staff body of a children's home should have a right to a weekly visit from a psychotherapist registered with one of the three recognised United Kingdom bodies for psychotherapy, or from a mental health worker with three years' relevant experience and one who is himself undergoing psychotherapy with a practitioner registered as above.
	The trade-off of a dynamic, risk-taking economy such as ours is greater social exclusion. Compared with Europe, our rate of unemployment is lower and our economy is performing better, but we also have the highest rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy, and, after Portugal, the second highest imprisonment rate in the European Union. However, Britain's incidence of social exclusion is far less than that of the United States, the world's most successful free market economy. Perhaps a recognition of this trade-off is implied by the Government's twin goals of enterprise and fairness. Our choice of economy over the past two decades has increased the number of children in care. I suggest that we have a duty to target some of that prosperity on to the most vulnerable. As the family has fared worst, children in care deserve a disproportionate share of our new wealth.
	Furthermore, investment in good social care saves money. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, pointed out during the Second Reading debate of the Children (Leaving Care) Bill, reducing by 10 per cent the number of care leavers graduating into young offender institutions would save £7 million per annum.
	I hope that the Government will consider making further provision fully to resource the service that I propose, should that be necessary. At the same time, I acknowledge that the Government are already increasing spending in this area by 3 per cent per annum for the next three years. The innovation I have described would be a bold, imaginative and effective step in bringing order to the chaos in many children's homes. As the noble Earl, Lord Howe, pointed out, this piece of legislation is a box in which no obvious and tangible elements are immediately obvious. Most of the improvements set out in the Bill will take years to bite. However, this simple proposal would bring improvements in months. Children in care have already been waiting for far too long.
	Over the coming months, I shall be working with others to establish a pilot service in children's homes. I should certainly appreciate advice from the Government and noble Lords on pursuing this project.
	Finally, I should like to pay tribute to all those who care for children not their own, to those who adopt children, to foster parents and to the staff of children's homes. Who could ever claim to match the nobility of their endeavour to give hope and love to an unsupported child?

Lord Lipsey: My Lords, the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, reflects what has been a theme of today's debate; namely, that speakers have been talking on subjects they really know about. Furthermore, that applies too to the wonderful maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Mackenzie of Culkein.
	There is only one part of the Bill of which I have particular knowledge, and that concerns the care of the elderly, so I shall confine my remarks to that subject. The reason I know a little of the subject is that I was a member of the Royal Commission on the Long-term Care of the Elderly. That commission spent an exciting 13 months discussing and investigating this subject. Some noble Lords will know that, sadly, the commission was not unanimous in its conclusions. I was one of two commissioners who signed a substantial note of dissent. However, we did agree on a good many matters, and the need for a national care commission was one of them. I very much welcome the fact that that commission will come into being as a result of this Bill.
	I believe that to be right for two principal reasons. First, when one goes round the country looking at care homes, one is struck by the huge variety in the quality of provision. There are wonderful homes with wonderful people doing wonderful work. But as I stand before the House, my stomach still turns at the recollection of the description of one home in the south east of England written by a member of the commission staff who went in and saw old people being treated, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, like animals. That variety of provision is what the Bill is intended to deal with.
	Incidentally, it is not a matter of money. According to the Audit Commission, there is practically no correlation between standards in homes and the amount of money each place costs. Some of the worst homes are the most expensive and some of the best homes are relatively cheap. It is a matter of having uniform standards, and therefore a national commission is required. If it were left to local authorities, the variety would be greater. A national commission will not mean instant equal standards. But as we have too much variety rather than too little, a national commission is the right way forward. I am glad that the Government have moved away from their earlier idea of having eight separate regional commissions.
	I have a second reason for favouring a Bill in this field. Under it, for the first time, local authority-run homes will be subject to external inspection. There is an interesting piece of social history as to why local authority-run homes have not been subject to external inspection. It is to do with a time in our national life when it was felt that if something was run by the state it must be all right and the standards must be good. But we have moved away from that idea. Indeed, the only area where local authority homes on the whole excel is expense. The average public sector residential home costs £366 per week compared with £238 in the average private home. That is a 54 per cent difference. Some small part of that may be attributable to the fact that a more needy kind of person tends to live in a local authority home, but the most likely explanation for much of the discrepancy is sheer inefficiency.
	The extra money does not bring higher standards. Perhaps I may give one example. Whereas only a minority of independent sector residential homes-- a little over 20 per cent--would fail to meet the new space and amenity standards to be introduced by the Government, in the public sector, I am ashamed to say, 55 per cent of homes would fail that test.
	I do not like to be dogmatic but in the long run I have no doubt that local authorities will have no business running care homes. The right model is for local authorities to commission from private providers the care that they need. According to the calculations of the minority report, if all local authority homes were closed tomorrow and were replaced by equivalent private sector homes, there would be a useful saving to the public purse of £500 million a year. In fact, it would not be right to close them all tomorrow because it would be awful for all those people who were hoping to see out their days in the home they are in and who would have to be forcibly moved elsewhere. For better or worse, the homes exist; and they will continue to exist for a period, though the numbers are, I am pleased to say, diminishing. But it follows from the fact that they will continue to exist that they must be brought within the system of regulation. I also dare to hope that regulation in itself will bring home to authorities, which have let these problems go on in some cases for years and years, that they are providing a not very good service at an unnecessarily high cost and persuade them to run down these homes as swiftly as is practicable and humane.
	We are to have more consistent regulation as a result of the Bill. That is excellent. Under the proposals in the Government's June consultation paper, Fit for the Future, we are also to have much higher standards for care homes. That, too, is excellent. But it bears with it the vital concomitant--the noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to this point earlier--that we need a flourishing private sector able profitably to provide places of the standard required. It is strange that when we come around to the need for a flourishing private sector, more noble Lords on these Benches seem to support it than on the Benches opposite. Perhaps that shows the changes that are occurring with time. We need a profitable private sector.
	However, we have a difficulty. There is a growing mismatch between the fees which local authorities are prepared to pay for residential care and the costs which homes incur in providing that care. Indeed, if I were not disinclined, by reason of my former profession of journalism, to any exaggeration, I would say that we have a crisis on our hands. I shall spare the House the full weight of the facts that lead me to that conclusion but I shall give just a few. Fees paid from the public purse account for around two-thirds of the income of care homes. According to the latest authoritative Laing and Buisson survey of the field, the fees paid by local authorities last year rose by 1.6 per cent for nursing homes and 2.2 per cent for residential homes. However, the wages of women working in those homes--that is the key cost factor in most homes--rose by 4.4 per cent. It is not easy to continue to increase productivity in this field. How do care home workers increase their through-put of feeding people meals or chatting to them when that is what they need? One cannot just do that.
	The result is not very surprising. It is that returns on capital are deplorable and the share price of the big care firms languishes. In October we learnt that Advantage Care, with more than 3,000 beds, had gone into administrative receivership. That followed the collapse of Grampian Care in June this year. Tamaris plc, one of the four remaining quoted long-term care companies, has been experiencing severe financial difficulties.
	Higher standards, as I have said, are excellent. But higher standards inevitably cost money. For example, the Government's own estimate of loss of revenue to homes as a result of the space standards set out in Fit for the Future is of between £80 million and £300 million a year. That will not all be incurred at once but the danger is of a greater squeeze on profit margins, more closures and, even in defiance of the Government's regulatory efforts, more corner-cutting and worse care.
	Some noble Lords may say that we do not want so many homes for the elderly, that surely we want people to be cared for in their own homes, and that therefore it would be a good thing if care homes were to go out of business. Alas, that is not so, for the population is continuing to age. Even on the most optimistic assumptions as to the proportion of older people who can live at home, our need for care homes will rise. On the best estimates put to the Royal Commission, it will double between now and the year 2050. Twice as many people will need care homes. The required investment will be at least £15 billion. If we close homes now in order to shave costs for local authorities and then later on we have to reopen them, the cost will be many times what is required to keep them going now. Having been a student of the Treasury for many years, I know how reluctant it is to accept arguments of spending now to save later. I hope that this argument might have some resonance.
	From all this one inexorable conclusion follows. It is that fees must go up; and as fees are paid by public authorities--local authorities and the Department of Health--that means that there will have to be more public expenditure. When the Government embark on the Comprehensive Spending Review, I hope they will give due weight to that need.
	I referred at the beginning of my remarks to the disagreement on the Royal Commission. In closing, I return to it briefly. The majority of the Royal Commission wanted care in all care homes to be free to all and not, as now, subject to a means test. That is a tempting proposition. But it is also a very expensive one, even on the majority's optimistic costing--absurdly optimistic, some of us believe--it would cost £1 billion a year now, rising to £6.4 billion by the year 2050.
	The minority, to sound a note of dissent, had a different priority. We wanted extra spending--not quite as much as the majority wanted--but not to make free what is now paid for. Rather, we wanted extra spending to improve the care that is now provided and needs improvement.
	What matters most--that better-off people who now pay for their own care should in future be paid for by the state so that they can leave their fortunes in full to their children, or that state resources should be used to improve standards for everyone in care homes, providing their proprietors with the incentive and wherewithal to look after their residents with dignity and love? The question answers itself.

Baroness Barker: My Lords, like many other speakers, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Culkein, on an outstanding maiden speech. It was joyful to listen to his wisdom and experience, particularly as his remarks were delivered in that most wonderful of accents which can make a telephone directory sound like poetry. I hope that he addresses the House many times again in the future.
	Of the 28 Bills announced in the gracious Speech, the Care Standards Bill has prompted comparatively little comment, and overall the reaction has been largely favourable. That is not surprising, given that all the major principles have been trailed in previous legislation and that the contentious parts of the measure--indeed, there will be some--will be contained in regulations not yet placed before the House.
	The establishment of an independent regulatory body for social care and private and voluntary healthcare services is welcome. However, that proposal, together with the production of a national service framework for the care of older people within the NHS, announced by the Secretary of State for Health on 2nd December, will lead to an overall better standard of care, not least because service users will, possibly for the first time, have clear expectations about the quality of service that they can reasonably expect in the NHS and in a variety of social care settings.
	The proposal for new, independent councils to register social care workers and regulate the training of social workers in England and Wales will also bring a welcome degree of clarity to what is currently a rather patchy and confused picture across the country.
	I want to take some time to consider the possible implications of the implementation of the Bill. In doing so, I shall draw to some extent on my experience of working with voluntary organisations which have been involved in lay assessor schemes. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Bill is the provision for registration and inspection. I want to address in particular the inspection of residential and nursing homes. Although the removal of responsibility for inspection from local authorities in order to achieve national consistency is understandable, there is a strong danger that the process of inspection may become so remote that it could become largely reactive. If inspections are carried out in order to monitor national minimum standards, and such inspection visits are carried out infrequently, it is highly likely that all that such inspections will do is uncover the most blatant of bad practice.
	There is a danger that, in order to meet the legal requirements of the Bill, some locally based schemes, such as lay assessor schemes, will be forced to end. There will not be the resources to maintain them. That would be regrettable. Such schemes have been very successful in doing an important job; namely, uncovering poor as opposed to bad practice. Such schemes have demonstrated that, often, only after there has been sufficient time for residents to become familiar with assessors and to trust them are issues raised. That is not surprising. If one of us were to experience a difficult problem in our own home, I doubt that our first response would be to discuss it with a complete stranger. I fear that the same will be true in relation to this provision. We should not forget that a care home is usually the only home that its residents have. However bad it is, the fear of losing it remains a powerful incentive to say nothing. If inspection is to work, it has to be carried out in such a way and with such frequency--I stress frequency rather than regularity--that people genuinely feel able to raise extremely difficult and intimate problems.
	Furthermore, such schemes have shown that care home owners, who are initially suspicious of inspection, can in time come to regard it as a helpful and valuable way of addressing problems. They, too, need to establish familiarity with inspectors. When the new inspection system is implemented, will there be sufficient resources to allow frequent visits, and also for the inspection process to be carried out in such a way that it is grounded in local circumstances and is not a remote and oppressive process for everyone involved?
	That leads me to a related issue on which I feel strongly; namely, the need for advocacy. Most older people in residential care are either physically or mentally frail. Whether old or young, people in residential care are emotionally vulnerable. To make a complaint, even informally, against the main provider of one's care requires a great deal of strength. Many people in residential care require support. I urge the Government, when considering the implementation of the Bill, not to overlook the considerable benefits of making provision for advocacy services.
	It has been widely acknowledged, and was eloquently put by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that the Bill's implementation will lead to the closure of residential homes, although there is some degree of argument as to the likely scale of the closure. In the early 1990s, in the wake of the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Act, many residential homes, most in the public sector, closed because they were unable to meet the standards that were set at the time. As a result of many instances in which older people were moved to new care homes and died shortly after, a great deal of research was conducted into the problem. Many valuable lessons were learnt, including the need to involve staff, relatives, residents, GPs and anyone who has anything to do with a home in that process. Above all, it was recommended that advocacy should play an integral part. Moving home is a trauma for anyone. It is well known that if a patient displays signs of stress, the first question a GP will ask is whether someone has died, and when the patient says no, the GP says, "Well, you must be moving". It is the same for those in residential homes. Having an advocate, someone whom they can trust to help them through that process, is extremely important. I should like to see that provision in the Bill.
	One criticism that can be made of the Bill is that it places heavier emphasis on the type of establishment in which services are offered than on the nature and standard of the services. It has long been the case in the NHS that services have been judged more on buildings and the state of those buildings than the treatment that individuals receive. I urge the Government--in seeking to bring greater cohesion to the monitoring of services across different sectors--not to fall into the trap of subjecting personal and social care to that same crude measure.
	I take issue with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who listed some of the proposed physical standards for residential care in a disparaging tone. Factors such as the physical layout of rooms are extremely important to residents and to the rest of us. One only has to visit Ikea on a Saturday afternoon to see how worked up people can get about plugs and chairs. We have to get away from looking at such establishments as institutions and consider them instead as homes.

Earl Howe: My Lords, I was not suggesting that such factors did not matter but that they should not be the be all and end all of any assessment of how good or bad was the level of care in a particular establishment. Of course I acknowledge the noble Baroness's points.

Baroness Barker: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Earl's clarification and am pleased that we agree.
	The Government's aims are complex and if the regulations that follow the Bill are based on the report Fit For the Future, the Government will seek to base standards on principles such as choice, dignity and privacy. Setting such standards is not easy. Setting qualitative standards inevitably introduces subjectivity into monitoring. The Government have taken the right course but will require the support of us all in making such a difficult concept work.
	Good standards change over time. What is accepted as best practice will cease to be. That is partly because the needs of older people change. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, mentioned projections about the older population. That population will in future be increasingly diverse. There will be greater numbers of older people from ethnic minority communities, who are lesbian or gay, or who come with a completely different expectation of good care. I urge the Government not only to make care standards explicit but to ensure that they are regularly updated.
	The Bill makes clear that standards count for nothing if staff are not trained to understand and implement them. My experience of residential care is that good home owners value competent staff and that service users value highly staff who perform their duties in a caring fashion. In an industry in which the greatest cost is staff and operating margins--as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said--are tight, the training budget is often the first to be cut. Good training costs a lot. If the new standards are to become reality, resources must be made available within the care sector economy to make sure that the Bill is about good care standards for the future, not a wish list for today.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, the Bill covers diverse issues, many of which have been avidly discussed in various forums for a number of years. In my five years in the early 1980s as the chair of a social services committee, many of those issues kept arising and were the subject of considerable debate among those interested in social care.
	The Bill will replace the Registered Homes Act 1984 and the provisions of the Children Act 1989 relating to the regulation of children's homes. Those Acts were important in developing a framework to protect standards in such establishments. The framework offered by the new national care standards commission is even more important because it will provide a national framework and national consistency.
	There has been much debate in the health service about postcode prescribing and differential levels of service, meaning that the NHS is not always a national service. The same applies in other areas of social care. If different standards are applied by different regimes in different areas, that should concern your Lordships. The arrival of the NCSC will permit a national framework and that will be valuable.
	Some people in local government have expressed concern that the work done by registration units will no longer be undertaken by local authorities. That concern is misplaced, in my view. Although extremely valuable and worthwhile work has been done by many registration units, it cannot be right for local authorities to be responsible for the registration of establishments that they manage; nor can it be right for local authorities to make decisions about registration or de-registration when the authorities are aware that they are financially responsible for a significant proportion of the residents--and thus for sorting out the consequences of decisions. I am not suggesting that some local authority registration units have made wrong decisions, but the possibility remains of a perception that the wrong decision has been made or that decisions have been taken due to other factors or interests. That is unhelpful. There should be clarity of the kind that can only be provided by an independent structure.
	Concern has been expressed by the independent hospital sector about the way in which independent healthcare will come under the umbrella of the NCSC. In practice, there will be a clear blurring of the edges between hospital and nursing home care. That already exists in the NHS and the public's mind, and I believe it exists in practice. There is, therefore, considerable logic in bringing the independent hospital sector under the wing of the NCSC. We must make sure that the NCSC focuses on the clinical standards provided within the independent hospital service. We should have the same clinical expectations of private healthcare as we do of the National Health Service. We ought to examine the way in which those two areas are brought together.
	I was interested in the argument of the noble Earl, Lord Howe--who clarified it in his exchange with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker--about how the NCSC might set standards. Despite the noble Earl's explanation, he was suggesting that there is almost a dichotomy between standards relating to space and those relating to the skills of those providing care. That assertion is not entirely legitimate. It is surely legitimate to want high standards relating to both space and skills. The noble Earl spoke also about standards invented by inspectors for inspectors, which I am sure was intended as a nice sound bite for "Today in Parliament" or the like, if this debate makes it that far. I believe that that was unfortunate. No one is talking about standards that are of interest only to inspectors. We must ensure that the standards are arrived at following considerable debate which involves both the users of the services concerned and those who care for them. I believe that that is a critical element.
	The noble Earl specifically highlighted the requirement that there should be two chairs in a room, one of which should have arms. It is an entirely reasonable expectation that there should be two chairs in a room that someone must use as his only bit of near-private space, and that one of those chairs should have arms. Those are the legitimate expectations of many of the service users, and perhaps we should not be too cynical about them.
	I also welcome the requirement in Clause 20(3)(j) for the establishment of complaints procedures as a condition of registration. However, perhaps my noble friend will clarify when he replies whether it is intended that there should be a common complaints procedure across the independent sector. Is it intended that that complaints procedure should have a second independent review stage analogous to that which exists in the admittedly imperfect NHS complaints procedure? I believe it is important that there should be not only a local opportunity to review matters but an independent element. I should also like to see the remit of the Health Service Commissioner extended to cover the independent sector as recommended by the House of Commons Select Committee on Health, and supported by the ombudsman.
	I turn briefly to the general social care council. That matter has been discussed for many years. Initially, I was extremely dubious about this proposition. It seemed to me that yet another group of middle-class professionals sought to wrap around themselves the cloak of professional indemnity. Those of us who have watched that in action in the legal, medical, dental or even nursing professions wonder whether this is in the interests of the users of the services concerned. I am reminded of Bernard Shaw's observation that,
	"All professions are conspiracies against the laity".
	When one looks at how some professional councils have operated in the past, one realises the need for reform. I have some doubts about the provision. However, a number of elements of the proposal are extremely important and perhaps many of these doubts can be set aside. First, it is not the intention to create an exclusive band of professionals that excludes others who are engaged in the same kind of work, as happens in some of the medical professional councils. It is intended that this should be a social care not a social work council, and that must be right.
	The other danger is that the professional organisations will end up protecting their own. It is very difficult for a disciplinary case to be proven. Certainly, it appears to the general public that the particular profession is protecting its own members and that individual professionals are trying their chums. I am well aware that all of the organisations concerned make big efforts not to be seen in those terms. I hope that my noble friend will make it clear--although it is not explicit in the Bill, I am sure that it is the intention of government--that there will be a very significant role for non-professionals in the council. I do not simply mean the involvement of people who are not social care professionals. Although I can see the case for a nursing professional or medical professional being a member of this body, I want it to be made clear that the majority of its members and leadership should be seen as representative in the broadest sense of those who are likely to use the service. I believe that to be an important principle.
	Finally, I welcome the provisions which recognise that there should be protection of vulnerable adults as well as children. Abuse can take all forms, and those who perpetrate it need to be prevented from working in other establishments in future. Therefore, the Government's proposals on that are extremely welcome.
	The Bill contains a diverse range of issues, and I believe that it takes the debate forward in many areas. For many years these matters have worried those who are concerned about the standards of social care. We have made step-by-step improvements in regulation and the setting of standards. I believe that this Bill takes the process forward, and I welcome it.

Baroness David: My Lords, I apologise for having missed just over an hour of the middle of this debate. In particular, I apologise to my noble friend for missing his maiden speech. I was chairing the All-Party Children Group which listened to children talking about Article 12 of the UN convention. I hope that I shall be excused.
	I should like to talk briefly about this very welcome Bill as it relates to children. In 1993 the Gulbenkian Foundation produced a valuable report entitled One Scandal Too Many which argued the case for comprehensive protection for children in all settings. Two years later I was a member of the foundation's commission, chaired by Sir William Utting, which produced a major report on children and violence. That contained many of the same recommendations for comprehensive protection. Sir William went on to produce his review of the safeguards for children living away from home entitled People Like Us.
	Unfortunately, the scandals have not ceased. The inquiry into child abuse in North Wales comes to mind. We have not yet had the report, although it finished about two years ago. Up and down the country many police forces are engaged in investigations into the physical and sexual abuse of children in all kinds of institutions that purport to care for them. It must stop. We must ensure that this Bill provides an effective framework finally to stop this inexcusable violence against children. In particular, we must ensure that there are no loopholes.
	I should like to ask the Minister for clear answers to what I hope are simple questions. First, can he assure us that, following implementation of the Bill, all children living away from home will be protected by consistent regulations from all forms of violence, including physical punishment and humiliating forms of discipline? I hope that the Minister is aware of Children are Unbeatable! which is an alliance of more than 250 organisations and many prominent individuals who campaign to give children the same protection from assault as adults enjoy under the law. It is absurd that children have less protection than us and that at the moment the degree of protection depends on the setting in which the child finds himself. We have sorted out protection in all schools at long last, but we must also get it right in all other child care settings.
	Secondly, can the Minister assure us that all children who live away from home will have well publicised and easy access to independent confidential advice, counselling, advocacy and complaints procedures with an independent element? Will the personal adviser proposed in the Children (Leaving Care) Bill fulfil that role? Thirdly, will there be consistent arrangements for regular and, where necessary, surprise inspection of all care settings for children, including an explicit obligation on inspectors to offer children and staff the opportunity to speak to them in confidence about issues of concern? I am particularly concerned that the safeguards in this Bill do not appear to cover the growing number of children who are in private foster care, despite Sir William Utting's clear recommendations.
	Further, the exclusions in Clause 1 of the Bill appear to leave some residential establishments for children entirely unregulated. Can the Minister comment on those illogical gaps in protection? For example, holding centres for refugee children and families would be omitted. Refugee children can remain in one of these establishments for a matter of days or even weeks. The centres are not required to have regard to the welfare of the child, do not have a duty to assess their immediate needs and are not covered by the inspection requirements.
	I turn to the proposal in Schedule 1 of the Bill that the national care standards commission will appoint a children's rights director. The White Paper referred to eight regional commissions each having a children's rights officer, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, mentioned in his speech. Is that still planned? It is of course good to get the concept of children's rights into the Bill, but I have heard those appointments being promoted by the Secretary of State for Health as an alternative to appointing a statutory children's rights commissioner for England, for which many noble Lords on all sides of the House have been campaigning for a long time. That really is misleading.
	Will the Minister make it clear once and for all that the functions of those children's rights directors or officers relate only to the 200,000 or so children in all forms of residential care and not to the other 11½ million children in England who all need an effective independent statutory institution to represent their rights and interests?
	As there appears to be no speaker from Wales on the list and as the Bill extends to Wales, I make a single plea. Could the Bill include a permissive clause enabling the Welsh Assembly to develop, through secondary legislation, a proper children's rights commissioner, which I understand it is keen to do? We may have to go on campaigning for a proper English commissioner, but surely we should not frustrate Wales in its desire to have one.
	There is much to commend in the Bill. The inclusion of adoption agencies is right. But surely it is high time that the Adoption Act 1976 was updated? The situation where the adoptions were mostly of babies and the very young has changed dramatically. There have been great changes in family structures and in parenting patterns. The majority of adoption placements now occur from the care system. We need a modern adoption framework which makes the welfare of the child the paramount consideration and acknowledges the ever increasing importance of good adoption services for adoptive parents, adopted children and the birth family.
	I am pleased that Part V of the Bill amends the Children Act 1989 to bring childminding and day care within the scope of the Bill. The early identification of children with special educational needs and early provision to meet their needs is crucial to children's later progress in the education system. Will Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools provide information and advice to the Secretary of State on how childminders and day-care providers are succeeding in meeting objectives in that area? To which Secretary of State will he report--the Secretary of State for Health or for Education?
	This is an extremely important and necessary Bill. It brings together the regulation and inspection system for early years child care and education and it signals an end to the confusion and duplication which two separate systems have created. There will be improvements in the quality of child care and early years education by ensuring that there are highly trained staff, and the status of social care workers will be raised. The general social care council will be responsible for the quality of the training all over the country. Child safety will no longer be a matter of geography, but one of consistency across the country.
	I have made a few criticisms during my speech, but I end by saying that there is the possibility of a much brighter future for the most disadvantaged in our society and that it is up to all of us to see that that commitment is kept.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I too pay tribute to the maiden speaker. I have only one regret, which is that he has another of those Scottish names that I shall have to look up 53 times in Dod's before I get it right. I congratulate him.
	I have four minutes in the gap, during which I want to champion an unpopular cause; that of those accused of misconduct under the terms of the Bill. I pay tribute to the work carried out on the subject by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in the Protection of Children Act, because the provisions in that Bill were precisely the same in terms of keeping and maintaining a list of those unsuitable for working with vulnerable adults.
	Although the Bill is wholly admirable in its intent and although I can honestly say that I have had the most intense personal experience of serious child abuse in my own life as well as professionally, because my firm acts for a number of organisations in that area, it is my thesis that unless we get that part of the Bill right, it will undermine it irreparably. Under no circumstances can the anxiety and indeed, the determination of Parliament and the public to do something much more effective about vulnerable old people and children be achieved while damaging simple justice to accused people.
	I put it to the House that if we allow a system such as the Bill contains, which does not adequately protect those accused of misconduct, it will have the effect of discouraging good people from going into those areas of care. It may even have the perverse effect of discouraging people from coming forward to complain when they should about those running homes of various types improperly.
	The procedure before which a person is found "guilty of misconduct" under Clause 71(7) does not involve a finding of fact by the Secretary of State; a consideration of the merits by the Secretary of State; or a quasi-judicial consideration by the Secretary of State. It involves merely the finding by him on the basis of his opinion. I repeat that that opinion is not at all the result of a rigorous finding of facts. It is not quasi-judicial, nor is it based on a consideration of the merits. It derives solely from the complaining provider of services.
	I need hardly tell anyone in this House who knows anything about that world that it is riven with difficulties and with personal relationships that are often tense. It is riven with 1,001 circumstances where one could imagine someone making a complaint under the provisions under the shadow of the legislation, knowing that what then follows may see the person concerned resigning and possibly having their career destroyed.
	Someone's career would be smashed by their going on the list. It is no good saying that there is a right of appeal. In what section of our national life are we content to see someone found guilty and convicted--this is a conviction; the phrase is "guilty of misconduct"--on the basis of no hearing, a private procedure, no regard of merits and no rigorous investigation of facts? Nowhere else; and we cannot do it here.
	However difficult it is to contend with the need for an open, merits-based, rigorous investigation of facts, we must do it because the price to innocent people put on that list will not be rectified by the right of appeal provided in the Bill.

Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should like to touch on one point of fact. In the explanatory notes and in the course of the debate, reference has been made to Royal Charters granted to private healthcare establishments. I speak as Chairman of Council of the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers, often affectionately referred to as "Sister Agnes", after the founder of the hospital in 1899, Miss Agnes Keyser.
	Sister Agnes has been privileged to have had a Royal Charter for almost 70 years. We greatly value the benefit of that status for our charitable work. We have been able over the years to help literally thousands of entitled individuals with the costs of their time as a patient in the hospital. We continue to this day to help many who would otherwise be unable to gain quick access to and benefit from the finest treatment and nursing care available anywhere. However, we do not see our Royal Charter status as a reason or excuse not to do everything we can to ensure that our standards of treatment and care are beyond reproach. We do not operate for profit. Some years ago we sought inspection by the local health authority. When that was judged to be unnecessary in our case, we invited the King's Fund, now entitled the Health Quality Service, to inspect us. This involved every aspect of the hospital's activity, both clinical and administrative. We were formally accredited by the King's Fund following its inspection. In September this year we were reinspected by the Health Quality Service.
	We volunteered for that review. After a most rigorous and detailed inspection of every aspect of our work, including our intensive care unit, our accreditation has been continued. The high standard of all aspects of our nursing care was specifically singled out for commendation by the Health Quality Service inspectors.
	I believe that in the absence of a regulatory regime it is in the interests of patients and the good name of the hospital which they may use to submit to regular high quality, independent audit. We at Sister Agnes Hospital will continue voluntarily to do so. For those reasons, I welcome the proposals to regulate more closely the independent healthcare sector, but no doubt as the Bill progresses to Royal Assent there will be sensible improvements to its treatment of private hospitals. However, there should be no loss of charitable privilege which a Royal Charter bestows.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, we have had a high-quality, serious and informed debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, suggested, all noble Lords who have spoken are agreed that overall the legislative package before your Lordships is crucial to raising standards and leading to more consistent regulation throughout the services. There has been some debate about the means by which we should ensure consistent regulation, and I shall deal with that in a moment, but there is no question of its importance. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, graphically described some of the incidents arising out of recent inquiries which have pointed to inadequacies in the current regulatory arrangements. Therefore, there is no doubt that we must improve on what we have. We must have a high-quality regulatory machinery which provides consistency throughout the country.
	However, as was said by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Crawley and Lady McFarlane, in our discussion of inadequate standards we must acknowledge that in many of the sectors under discussion there is to be found high-quality care provided by high-quality people. As I respond to the debate, tending to dwell on some of the concerns, I want the House to know that I recognise that in many sectors people are doing good work, sometimes in difficult circumstances.
	The noble Earl, Lord Howe, suggested that the Bill is a framework Bill with much of the detail to be described in regulations and in the closely related national minimum standards which will inform the regulation and inspection process. I do not apologise for the Bill's dependence on regulations. My experience in this area was as director for the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts when it produced the first guidelines on how health authorities ought to approach their regulatory function. A frustration in producing the guidelines was that the current Act did not keep pace with market changes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, standards change. I believe that through the regulations in the Bill we shall be able to respond to future developments in services and technology. We can ensure that future anomalies or gaps can be tackled immediately.
	However, I assure your Lordships that in relation to the regulations which apply in particular to the required standards we shall consult widely with all those who may be affected. Our aim is for that consultation to take place in the summer. The conclusions will be known by April 2001, thus giving a year before the commission comes into operation. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, cautioned us against undue haste. In framing the regulations and the national minimum standards, it is important to take time to consult widely and seek as much input as possible from those likely to be affected.
	A number of questions were asked about the change from the original intention of eight regional commissions to one national commission. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his wholehearted support of that change. The fact is that we have changed our minds. I believe that it is right to do so and to own up to it. On reflection, we believe that a single commission will ensure greater consistency across the country. After all, that has been one of the great motivators in making the changes. One commission instead of eight will avoid duplication, minimise the potential for arbitrary and confusing operational differences and provide the Government with one overview of the provision and quality of care services in England.
	However, I take the point that whatever the commission does it must be well grounded in practice at local level. We will expect it to have in place arrangements for keeping in touch with what is happening on the ground, and I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that we want members of the commission to make close contact with what is happening at ground level. I accept the stricture of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that we do not want a bureaucratic tick-box approach to regulation and inspection. Her comments about the complaints system, advocacy services and the role of lay assessors was important and we shall consider them when considering more closely how the commission will operate. I want to assure noble Lords that I am certain that the commission, in providing the greater national uniformity and consistency that we wish to see, must know about the impact of its decisions on local services.
	I turn to a second aspect of the decision to move from eight regional areas to one national commission. It relates specifically to the regulation of independent healthcare. The original comments about a single custom-built body for the regulation of the independent healthcare sector were made on the basis of the Government's original intention to have eight regional care commissions. We did not believe that regulation of the independent healthcare sector within those eight regional commissions would be sensible. We believed that it would be difficult for those commissions to have the necessary expertise to regulate the healthcare sector. That was our experience when regulation was devolved to health authority level.
	However, with the establishment now of one commission for the whole of the country, we think it makes much more sense to ensure that it embraces private healthcare regulation. It will enable a seamless approach to regulation as a whole to be taken and our experience of splitting legislation previously between health and local government shows the problems that can arise in relation to boundaries. That was a point well made by my noble friend Lord Harris. However, I recognise that healthcare regulation needs particular skills and we will ensure that those skills are available within the context of one commission.
	Different care regimes will be subjected to specific requirements suited to the specific situation of that regime, such as independent healthcare. Those bodies will be inspected by qualified and experienced inspectors in a particular field. In relation to healthcare, we will also ensure that it has its own division with its own director, with inspections made by appropriate professional staff. It would not be responsible for care homes or domiciliary workers.
	Perhaps I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who has put much thought and care into these issues, that I believe this new regulatory machinery will have teeth in relation to the independent healthcare sector. It is going to be a tough regulatory system. The commission will have high quality inspections. We will want to shift the focus of regulation towards standards of care rather than being mainly concerned with premises. I will touch on the issue of premises in relation to care homes later.
	It will have a proper complaints procedure, in answer to my noble friend Lord Harris. One of the conditions of registration will be the provision of a proper complaints procedure, with independent scrutiny. We want those independent hospitals to be accountable to their customers for the services that they provide. Already Clause 20 allows provision to be made for appropriate quality and for the meeting of appropriate standards. Clause 21 refers to the national minimum standards that should be set.

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, I welcome the positive comments that the Minister has put forward most warmly and most genuinely. He knows that I would prefer to see some of them on the face of the Bill, and perhaps I could leave that thought with him in case he should kindly offer me a further meeting when we could discuss them.
	However, in the context of a Second Reading, could I ask him to assure me that the inspectors will look at clinical excellence in some way or another and that the procedure extensively described by the noble Lord, Lord Craig, in which clinical excellence is not looked at although the nuts and bolts of equipment are, will not in fact be what happens. Therefore it will not be just the shell but the actual procedures that are examined. I am grateful to the Minister.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the noble Baroness was quite right to refer to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Craig: I think they were very helpful in demonstrating how an individual hospital can, through its own internal processes, look at quality and ensure that it keeps up standards to the extent that we would require. I want to assure the noble Baroness that this Bill intends to provide for the proper regulation of the independent healthcare sector and that must extend to issues of quality. It is not just about room size or the physical apparatus.
	The Secretary of State will have powers to make the kind of the provision in regulations which I hope will reassure the noble Baroness: for instance, provision for ensuring that the professional staff employed are qualified and have the necessary skills and experience. There will be provision for making arrangements for clinical audit and for the keeping of effective clinical records, for equipment and services, and also for identification of management and clinical risk. Regulations will also require arrangements for the on-going training, development and support of staff.
	Several noble Lords have raised the issue of CHIMP and NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. In some ways this is a re-run of our interesting debate during the passage of the health Bill during the last Session. The fact is that CHIMP and NICE are about improving quality in the National Health Service. They are part of a managed system; they are part of a series of measures, including National Service Frameworks, tied into performance management in the National Health Service. I believe that there is an inherent difference between managing public authorities--the National Health Service--which is the role of the Secretary of State, for which he is accountable to Parliament, and regulating the independent healthcare system. That is the reason for our different approach in this area.
	I can say that as far as the working together of CHIMP and the proposed commission under this Bill, there is provision for staff to be seconded from one to the other. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to NHS pay beds, and the reason for those beds being treated differently goes back to the original point I made earlier. NHS pay beds are part of the National Health Service management system, for which accountability arrangements are well tried and tested. I believe that we have to draw a distinction between management and regulation in the NHS.
	Turning to a number of questions on financial issues, I recognise that there is concern about the financial implications of the new regulatory system. As a general principle, we owe it to the people receiving services to ensure that there is an effective regulatory system in operation, providing greater protection for vulnerable people. The cost to providers will be outweighed by the benefits to individual users. However, I hope I can provide some comfort by saying that we intend that the timescales will be realistic and we shall ensure that currently registered providers have sufficient time in which to meet the new standards.
	It is also possible to differentiate between one standard and another when deciding on a date for their implementation. I understand the issue of the financial viability of a number of homes. My noble friend Lord Lipsey had some interesting things to say on that point. Of course there is over-capacity at the moment. On the issue of cost and the impact of that on the resources passed by the Exchequer to local authorities, I am afraid I cannot be drawn on that matter, save to say that this would be an issue for any future spending review discussions.
	This leads me on to the Centre for Policy on Ageing guidelines and the remarks made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about whether the balance was too much towards physical requirements, as opposed to an emphasis on quality. Let me say to the noble Earl that the Government are very much concerned with outcome and overall quality. Although physical requirements are important, as several speakers have suggested, we are concerned that this regulatory system should ensure that issues of quality are given the importance that they deserve. I should also say to him that the first reference I could discover to the 10 square meter bedroom size goes back to 1973, when I think his party was in government. At that time building guidelines were issued by the department to local authorities. However, I have to confess that in the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts guidance in 1985 we too mentioned 10 square meters, so that figure has obviously been around for quite some time.
	I would emphasise the point made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey that the agencies in most difficulty if this 10 square meter size were to be accepted would be the local authorities. In general, the consultation period on this first tranche of potential national minimum standards has been extended to 21st January 2000. We shall consider them most carefully. I believe it is important that we get them right and we shall listen carefully to the remarks which have been made by noble Lords this evening.
	I turn to the General Social Care Council. As my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley said, that is an extremely important, long overdue measure. I pay tribute to her and to the members of her advisory council, who do so much good work to ensure that the preparations for the new council start with an excellent foundation. Both my noble friends Lady Pitkeathley and Lord Harris made clear that it is important that we have sufficient users and lay people as members of the council. I can confirm that a lay person will be appointed as chair of the council and that lay people will be in the majority.
	In response to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, regarding the budget, it is rather early to start talking about a definitive budget. However, as a guideline figure, the CCETSW had a budget of about £5.5 million. One could start from the transfer of that kind of money. In time, it may be that people registered by the council will pay fees. There is no question of the council having to break even simply on the fees that it might take in from those registered.
	I also take the opportunity provided by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, to thank the CCETSW for its past work. Its experience will be invaluable in taking forward the work of the general council. In his notable maiden speech, my noble friend Lord Mackenzie asked about the method of registration. Registration will normally be based on completion of approved training. Any other basis will be no better than that which we have at present. We would expect the register of individuals to be opened when the majority or a sufficient number of members in any group have achieved the appropriate level of training.
	In response to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane, we do not seek the dual registration of nurses. We want to see professional regulatory bodies complement each other.
	My noble friend Lady David asked about the issue of the children's rights director. The director's responsibility relates to the provisions in this Bill. I know that she is keen to see created a children's commissioner, but that is certainly outside the scope of the Bill and, as she will know, it is not present government policy. I can also confirm to her that there will be only one children's rights director in the move from eight regional care commissions to one. Of course, we believe that that director will have a crucial role to play in dealing with so many of the difficult issues in relation to the rights of children. With regard to whether there will be well publicised access to an independent complaints procedure for children in care, I confirm that the children will have such access and that inspections will ensure that those procedures are well publicised.
	I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and particularly to the issue of whether people with learning disabilities who attend day care services could have those services regulated. I confirm that the Bill does not introduce regulation for adult day care services. I am conscious that there are those who regret that. We have included a provision in the Bill to allow further services to be brought within regulation at a later date without the need for primary legislation. In the meantime, I am sure that the noble Lord will be aware that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State recently announced a review of learning disability services, including the provision of day care.
	I fear that the clock is against me. In relation to domiciliary care, perhaps I may confirm that, as a first stage of the implementation of this section of the Bill, local authorities and the NHS must use only registered agencies. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, that we would expect the great majority of those domiciliary care agencies to be registered immediately.
	As always, I listened with great care to the wisdom of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The Bill generally will not cover hostels for homeless young people, although it will cover them when they act as refuges for young people who have run away from home. In such cases, the hostels will be registered as children's homes with special provision for runaways. I look forward to the noble Earl's amendment in Committee.
	As he did when we debated the child protection Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, raised the issue of vulnerable adults. Overall, I believe that the Bill provides an effective procedure. As the noble Lord knows, the Secretary of State must receive a proper referral from an employer in the stated circumstances. A person can be put on the vulnerable adults list only after due process. The Secretary of State seeks views from the parties involved. He considers whether, on the balance of probabilities, the employer was right in forming a view that the person put a vulnerable adult at risk of harm. The individual will know at all stages what is happening. I agree with him that that is a serious matter for the person concerned. That is why we provide an appeal to an independent tribunal. We have also provided for a person to seek a review of the decision 10 years from the date of listing. At that stage, the tribunal could decide to remove the name from the list. I understand that the noble Lord's specific point of concern arises from provisional listing. I believe that that is--

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am not so concerned about the provisional listing as about the listing in entirety. The noble Lord referred to due process in that listing but, I repeat, there is no independent consideration of evidence, there is no open procedure, there is no merits test, and it does not amount to due process in the normal sense of the term.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Nevertheless, my Lords, it is still open for the person concerned to appeal to an independent tribunal. I believe that provisional listing is an important issue which we have debated before. It provides a means of immediate protection to vulnerable adults until the matter is decided by the process. I accept that there is a difficult balance to be drawn between the individual rights of a person about whom an allegation is made and the protection of vulnerable people. We believe that we have the right balance, although I accept that the noble Lord thinks otherwise.
	I have not been able to respond to all the points raised but I shall certainly try to follow up specific questions which I have missed out.
	In conclusion, I believe that all noble Lords are agreed generally about the positive impact which the Bill will have in so many care sectors and, indeed, in the private healthcare sector. I believe that the debate has confirmed the general thrust in which the Bill is directed, although I accept that we shall have many interesting debates in Committee and at later stages of the Bill. Therefore, I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Baroness David: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I asked rather a lot of questions about children but he has not answered many of them. Perhaps he might write to me.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I shall be very happy to do so.
	On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Legal Advice and Assistance (Scope) (Amendment) Regulations 1999

Lord Bach: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 1st December be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Bach: My Lords, these regulations are necessary to underpin contracts that will replace a substantial part of the existing legal aid scheme with effect from 1st January 2000. The Legal Aid Board has announced awards of around 5,000 general civil contracts to solicitors' firms and over 330 contracts to not-for-profit agencies. In future those will be the exclusive method of delivering legal aid for the categories of work that they cover. Depending on the expertise of each contractor, contracts can cover all advice and assistance in civil matters and representation in family and immigration cases.
	Contracting is central to the Government's plans to improve quality, to target priority needs and to control the cost of publicly funded legal services. All contracts will go to providers of proven quality and expertise. To win a contract, a provider has to have passed the Legal Aid Board's quality franchise audit on a full or provisional basis. Provisional franchisees have to meet the full standard within one year.
	In order to control cost, each solicitor's contract specifies the number of new advice and assistance cases that the provider is authorised to start next year. That number could be increased during the year to meet unexpected demand. The Legal Aid Board has retained a reserve for that purpose in each category. On the other hand, the number can be reduced if a provider's average case costs increase to ensure that the total cost of the contract remains within budget, or if it is clear that the provider will not start the number of cases allowed in the contract.
	The effect of the regulations will be to amend the Legal Advice and Assistance (Scope) Regulations 1989 by excluding much of Part III of the Legal Aid Act 1988. Part III currently covers all advice and assistance, including assistance by way of representation.
	From 1st January next year, legally aided advice and assistance in civil matters will be provided through the Legal Aid Board's civil general contracts. Those contracts will be governed by Part II of the 1988 Act until the Access to Justice Act 1999 takes effect on 1st April 2000. Part II is the free-standing power for the Legal Aid Board to make contracts to secure advice and assistance, and representation, provided that the Lord Chancellor authorises them to do so by direction. The entitlement to funding and protection from costs available under the other parts of the Act do not apply to services procured under Part II.
	Section 8(3) of the 1988 Act provides for regulations to exclude from Part III, advice and assistance of all descriptions or of any prescribed description. These regulations, with a few exceptions, will exclude most civil matters from Part III. The purpose of that is to ensure that only those with contracts under Part II will be able to provide advice and assistance in accordance with their contracts.
	The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, seeks to amend the Motion to approve the regulations so that it calls on the Government to defer implementation until the Access to Justice Act is brought into force. I shall not dwell on the technical validity of that. As amended, the Motion would still approve regulations which state on their face that they come into force on 1st January next year. However, the noble Lord is really asking--no doubt in a few moments he will tell us--why the contracts and related changes are being introduced under the Legal Aid Act, rather than waiting until the Access to Justice Act is brought into force.
	The timetable for the contracting process, culminating on 1st January next year, was set and published by the Legal Aid Board well before the Access to Justice Act was passed. That process has involved extensive consultation at every stage and it has required a great deal of work on the part of thousands of solicitors' firms and hundreds of advice agencies in the voluntary sector in order to achieve the franchise standards and apply for contracts. The firms and agencies which undertook that work and have been awarded a contract have every right to expect those contracts to take effect on 1st January, and that they will be the exclusive means of providing legally-aided advice and assistance.
	I shall deal as shortly as I can with the exceptions. First, I turn to assistance by way of representation, or ABWOR. The regulations leave most ABWOR unaffected, so it will continue to be provided under Part III of the 1988 Act; ABWOR in family proceedings is retained because it is necessary to ensure that costs protection under Section 12 of the Act continues for such cases. Nevertheless, that work will be restricted to holders of a family contract by virtue of the Prescribed Panel (Amendment) Regulations to which I shall turn a little later. Those regulations also apply to representation in family and immigration cases which will be provided by contracts under Part IV of the 1988 Act.
	Most other ABWOR relates to criminal matters, or to matters which, although technically civil, are essentially criminal in nature; for example, cases involving a risk of imprisonment for failure to obey a court order. Those cases will be funded as part of the Criminal Defence Service from October next year. Meanwhile legal aid remains available.
	Two categories of ABWOR are excluded from Part III by Regulation 7: ABWOR for representation before the Mental Health Review Tribunals is excluded because in future that will be dealt with under the contracts under Part II of the Act; ABWOR for proceedings under the Fire Precautions Act is excluded altogether. Funding for those cases, which concern the regulation of commercial premises, is not justified under a scheme intended to help individuals.
	The regulations also provide for some green form advice and assistance to remain within the scope of Part III--that is, advice and assistance relating to criminal matters, clinical negligence and personal injury.
	Criminal advice and assistance will be preserved until the Criminal Defence Service comes into effect in October 2000. It is available for individuals who are arrested and held in custody or who are involved in criminal investigations or proceedings. The regulations set out a list of proceedings which are defined as criminal proceedings for that purpose. Again, that includes matters which are technically civil, but which will be funded by the Criminal Defence Service in due course; for example, proceedings for anti-social behaviour orders and judicial reviews arising out of criminal proceedings.
	Advice and assistance will also continue to be available under Part III for clinical negligence cases. It will continue to be restricted to franchised solicitors under the Legal Aid (Prescribed Panels) Regulations 1999 until 1st April next year when the Access to Justice Act takes effect. At that stage, the existing arrangements will be incorporated in the general civil contracts held by relevant franchisees.
	Similarly, personal injury work is excluded from the scope of the contracting regime introduced on 1st January next year. Until 31st March, any solicitor will be able to take on personal injury cases. On 1st April, the contract specifications will be amended to cover advice, assistance and representation in residual personal injury cases; that is to say, cases which are not excluded from the scope of funding by Schedule 2 to the Access to Justice Act 1999 because they do not relate to injury caused negligently. Those are, for example, cases where the client alleges that he was assaulted by the police while in custody. Personal injury franchisees with contracts will also be able to apply for additional funding in support of a conditional fee agreement in exceptionally expensive personal injury cases. The Lord Chancellor will issue a direction allowing those cases, and cases that raise issues of wider public interest, to remain within the scope of public funding.
	Noble Lords will notice that Regulation 5 refers, among other things, to the making of wills. The Lord Chancellor intends to make a direction authorising funding under the 1999 Act to assist vulnerable clients to make a will. That will cover broadly the same categories for which legal aid funding is available now. The Legal Aid Board's contracts will provide for that from January 2000.
	Contracting will provide a guarantee of quality of service; help us to target priorities; and promote value for money. The regulations before us today help to underpin the contracting process.
	We are planning to spend a total of £202 million on advice and assistance next year, compared with about £180 million this year. It is important that this public money is spent wisely. Our reforms will be good for the client because they assure him or her of a quality service; good for the taxpayer because they help to control cost and to improve value for money; and good for competent providers as well, for example, because they provide greater certainty about workload and cashflow than the current scheme. I commend the regulations to the House.
	Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on lst December be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].--(Lord Bach.)

Lord Goodhart: rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert "save that this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to defer the coming into force of paragraphs 2 to 7 until Section 4 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 has been brought into force".

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, the order moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is a major step in dismantling the Legal Aid and Advice Scheme which has served the country well for the past 50 years. As was pointed out, the order does not directly concern legal aid for litigation. It concerns legal advice and assistance, provided under Part III of the Legal Aid Act 1988. It is generally known as the green form scheme.
	The green form scheme has meant for many years that someone who cannot afford to pay for his own legal advice can go to any solicitor who does legal aid work. He can walk in at short notice, even perhaps off the street, and receive advice on his legal problems for an hour or so. The green form scheme is usually the first point of contact with the legal profession for ordinary people who have a legal problem or who think that they may have a legal problem. It is essential, in the interests of those people, that advice and assistance should be available as widely as possible. That is particularly true in country districts and in socially deprived urban areas.
	At present, advice and assistance can be provided, as we have been told, under Part III of the Legal Aid Act 1988, on all matters except conveyancing and the making of wills. There are significant exceptions to the exclusion of the making of wills. However, as the Minister pointed out, we are now on the verge of fundamental changes. It is the intention of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to bring the Access to Justice Act into force on 1st April next year. Under that Act, aid, advice and assistance will be funded by the Community Legal Service through contracts with providers. The Legal Aid Act will, in effect, be wholly repealed.
	In debates on the Access to Justice Act, we fought hard to keep a wider network of solicitors' firms available to provide publicly funded services for those in need of them. I refer in particular to the great efforts made in those debates by my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, who will also speak in the short debate on this amendment.
	However, we lost that battle. We shall have to accept that the Access to Justice Act or, as I prefer to call it, the restriction of access to justice Act, will come into force. But this order is made under the Legal Aid Act, not the Access to Justice Act. As we have been told, it will have the effect that almost all advice and assistance on civil matters, except for personal injury cases, will be excluded from Part III of the Legal Aid Act in non-criminal cases--that is, personal injuries and clinical negligence. On all other matters, such as housing law, employment law, family law, and social security law, advice and assistance will be available only from solicitors who have a contract with the Legal Aid Board under Part II of the Legal Aid Act.
	That will, at a stroke, reduce by a half the number of solicitors able to provide advice and assistance at no cost to the client. It will reduce the number from 10,000 to 5,000 firms. That will inevitably reduce access to justice.
	The Law Society believes, as I do, that there is also a serious problem with the timing of the order. As I understand it, contract offers were only sent out on Friday 26th November. That means they will not have reached solicitors until 29th November at the earliest. Those offers have to be accepted by next Wednesday, 15th December. But the timetable means that by 1st January there will be no public information about which firms have contracts. The public will not know where to go and the other advice organisations will not know where to send referrals. In some fields, such as welfare law, the Legal Aid Board has only so far offered contracts for about half the work that will need to be contracted out. That will create uncertainty as to the sources of advice and assistance for weeks, if not months, to come.
	The regulations are wrong in principle because they make it harder for people who need legal advice to get it. The order is wrong in timing because the contract system is not yet capable of handling the burdens.
	My Motion of amendment is not intended as fatal. The time may come when your Lordships' House will wish to exercise its powers to reject secondary legislation. This is plainly not that occasion. I simply ask the Government to consider deferring the impact of the regulations until the Access to Justice Act comes into force. Then we shall be faced inevitably with different considerations. But I firmly believe that we should not use the powers under the Legal Aid Act as the engine of its own destruction. I beg to move.
	Moved, as an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert "save that this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to defer the coming into force of paragraphs 2 to 7 until Section 4 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 has been brought into force".--(Lord Goodhart.)

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, this is a strange debate, coming after a long, hard-fought debate over the measure, the Access to Justice Act, as it now is. I want to avoid going over the old territory because it is passe. I fully accept what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said in opening this short debate: namely, that the deed is done and we must now make the best of it. My comments are meant in that spirit, although inevitably they will be critical. However, I hope they will be critical towards a better implementation of the massive amount still to be done under the Access to Justice Act. It is solely with that in mind that I wish to speak.
	First, one must accept that there is something approaching bureaucratic mayhem in the legal aid world at the moment. The blue sky reforms which the Government pushed through--again I need not elaborate on how ill-advised we thought many of them were, however well-intentioned--have created a monster of bureaucracy. I urge the Minister to take on board that the future steps in implementation of the Act should, so far as possible, reduce the amount of bureaucracy.
	Perhaps I may wave before the House this 270-page document called: General Civil Contract (Solicitors). It is merely the handbook for those who seek a franchise. It is stuffed with systems, regulations, impenetrable gobbledegook. It has 90 definitions before one can start reading the wretched book. That may seem good and dandy to those who believe that solicitors are, to a man and woman, a load of crooks wishing to rip off the system. However, in reality it is a huge impediment, particularly to the small and smaller firms which the Government should be most concerned to help. It is those small and smaller firms which are often closest to their clients, have the lowest overheads, are willing to take the rough with the smooth, understand the social circumstances with which they are trying to deal, and often have the energy and initiative which is not always present in more mature firms.
	One must also have regard to the fact that the scheme is extremely expensive by reason of bureaucracy. I have talked to a number of firms which reckon that the additional bureaucracy created since the Act came into effect and in preparation for it have perhaps put 10 per cent on the overheads of providing legal aid. That money must come from somewhere or they will simply withdraw.
	My noble friend Lord Goodhart mentioned accessibility. Again, I know that it is a deed now done--that is to say, putting the green form scheme, the old legal advice and assistance scheme, exclusively into the hands of those who have contracts--but, if the Government cannot review that decision because it has only just been taken, I urge them at least to have regard to its consequences in other areas of work.
	As we have heard, something like half the firms that were doing legal aid a year ago have now dropped out. Admittedly, in many, if not most, cases they are firms which did a small amount of legal aid. But, nonetheless, we are talking about 5,000 offices spread over all parts of the country that were accessible to people in their high streets and able to provide some cheap, immediate and first-class legal aid.
	We are now seeing not only a severe reduction in geographical access but also an internal blockage within the firms with the general civil contracts (which, therefore, retain the right to do the old green-form work). That is because one of the rules of the contracts states that there should be an authorisation process, which, I am told--and I know--is actually getting in the way of people giving advice to those who need it, when they need it. In other words, unless you can find an authorised partner ready and available to consider the particular item of work needed for the client, it cannot properly be done. I need hardly say that most solicitors are extremely busy, either out of the office or involved in engagements within it. Clients will not come into a solicitors' office and hang around for an uncertain time waiting in case a solicitor may come back and be able to give the necessary authorisation. So we have that problem.
	As I indicated, we also have a problem with regard to small and smaller firms. Perhaps I may make reference to one particular case, which is the subject of a judicial review claim against the Legal Aid Board. It is no problem to that litigation that I mention the facts involved. Mackintosh Duncan was a firm established only last summer specifically to deal with legal aid in the fields of mental health, community care, health and human rights law. Two young solicitors with a great deal of experience came together specifically to undertake this sort of work. But what did they find? They found that they were not even asked to apply for a franchise.
	Perhaps I may quote from one of the affidavits in the case that has been sent to me:
	"Mackintosh Duncan is bringing these proceedings as a result of severe concern that the scheme as currently envisaged will have devastating results for the most vulnerable people in society who are most in need of quality legal advice and representation".
	The affidavit continues to outline the setting up of the firm on 1st July 1999, and I should like to refer to one more paragraph in the affidavit because, as I apprehend it--I have spoken to various organisations and firms--this is a general state of affairs:
	"The current confusion among practitioners has been caused by the enormous amount of documentation produced by the [Legal Aid Board] within an unrealistically short time period, the failure of the [Legal Aid Board] to provide clear and consistent information and publish figures relating to the allocation of funding and the basis for such allocations, and ultimately the [Legal Aid Board's] failure to properly take into account the severe concerns raised by the profession ... [has resulted in] a rigid, unworkable and wholly unrealistic regime which is due to be imposed within the next three weeks".
	I do not need to tell the House that that is a particular point of view and one held by someone currently suing the Legal Aid Board. But, nonetheless, I give it as an example to noble Lords because I think that that will be found to be a general view among legal aid practitioners.
	I conclude by saying that we must, of course, "suck it and see". However, I really hope that the Government will be prepared, if necessary, to go back on parts of the scheme as currently envisaged. I am delighted to see that they are already not talking, as they were not long ago, about introducing a block contracting system.
	I suggest that a better relationship with the profession, particularly with the Law Society, would be a very good start towards improving this dramatic revolution in legal aid. I urge the Government that that relationship should be one of a willingness to listen; indeed, more than has been the case in the past. Although I have these strictures, I sincerely hope that what we see over the next months and years will make my fears and those of my noble friends on these Benches seem unnecessary and ill-conceived.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, as I listened to this debate it occurred to me that these regulations have a close connection with the situation of asylum seekers in this country and their need for legal advice and legal aid. As the Government's dispersal policy develops, will the Minister consult with his colleagues in the Home Office to try to ensure that there are qualified and recognised firms capable of giving legal advice in the specialised area of asylum and immigration law so that people who need such assistance can have access to it?

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, as the noble Lord the Minister knows, the Opposition supported the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, throughout the various stages in your Lordships' House of the Access to Justice Bill. Sadly, I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, when he says that that is a battle valiantly fought but now lost. We have to accept the fact that the principles advanced by the Government during the course of the proceedings on that Bill now prevail.
	However, it is perfectly legitimate for the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart--and, indeed, the Opposition-- to ask the Government to verify every stage of the implementation of the new legislation against these principles. What were those principles in relation to advice, as opposed to litigation? As I understand it, the Government set out to establish a system of advice that would prevent litigation being necessary. If you like, it was the legal equivalent of preventive medicine. How successful will these arrangements be when measured against that principle?
	Can the Minister say what steps the Lord Chancellor's Department is taking to ensure that the arrangements, as they develop, meet the objectives set out by the Government? Both the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, have distinguished the two critical stages in this process. The first one concerns the relationship between the Legal Aid Board and the solicitors; and the second one concerns the relationship between the solicitors and the general public, or those members of the general public who need advice.
	Is the Minister satisfied that the system of monitoring by the Lord Chancellor's Department is making sure that the Legal Aid Board is going to meet its targets in time for 1st April 2000? What procedures has the Lord Chancellor's Department put in place to ensure that those targets are met? Further, is the Minister confident that, from 1st April 2000, the range of expertise among solicitors who are franchised and their geographical spread will meet all the likely advice targets that the Government will have identified?
	It is only if the Lord Chancellor's Department can be confident that those targets are met that it can reasonably say good-bye to the green form system. Although we accept that the principles have changed, we are now entitled to ask the Government to measure their performance against their own principles. It is concern about the likelihood that there may be a shortfall that lies behind not only the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, but also those expressed by the Opposition.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate, as it has been described. I shall do my best to answer the queries that have arisen.
	As has already been admitted, much of what has been said was said earlier this year, night after night, and has been repeated today in very much the same terms. I shall say, as briefly as I can, roughly what was said during the good debates on the Access to Justice Bill, as it then was.
	The criticism appears to be that somehow or other the Government, through the steps that we are taking, will reduce meaningful access to this provision to those who most need it. The Government refute that proposition completely. It is suggested that it will not be possible for those living in urban areas or sparsely populated rural areas to consult a solicitor who provides legal aid. We dispute that. We do not think that that will happen under the new system.
	I put into context some of the concerns that have been expressed about access to legal services. As has been said, the number of firms receiving contracts for January is about half of those which have been doing legal aid work up to now. About 5,000 solicitors' offices currently account for 90 per cent of legal aid expenditure. The other 5,000 offices account for the remaining 10 per cent, and typically undertake few such cases per year. Therefore the reduction in numbers as regards those firms that will undertake publicly funded work in this field is not nearly so significant as it may appear. Although there is, of course, no direct correlation between the 5,000 that carry out 90 per cent of the work and the 5,000 that carry out 10 per cent of the work, I suggest that it is common sense that those firms which have received contracts are those which on the whole have always carried out a considerable amount of publicly funded work. They have received contracts because they have qualified under the franchise scheme that has been set up. That franchise scheme is all about quality.
	The Government argue that the weakness in the case that has been put forward in the amendment is that no mention is made of quality. We argue that a number of firms that have not so far obtained contracts and have not passed the franchise test frankly do not have the necessary quality to give proper advice and assistance to those in need. Some firms have not applied; others have and have so far been unsuccessful. But the door is still very much open. It is important to remember the importance of quality in terms of the advice that is given.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned asylum seekers. It has been accepted on all sides that in the field of immigration a substantial number of legal advisers, solicitors and non-solicitors, have been quite unscrupulous in raising people's hopes through giving them false advice. We have had to take notice of that. That is why a large number of solicitors and legal advisers will not appear on our prescribed list of those carrying out immigration work.
	I refer to particular points--

Lord Hylton: My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, will he undertake to consult with the Home Office on the precise point that I was trying to make earlier?

Lord Bach: My Lords, of course I undertake to do that. The matter I am discussing is not a bad example of why the Government felt that it was necessary to do something with regard to the limited resources available for legal aid. We were concerned about quality, and about legal aid going through the roof.
	It is unfair for noble Lords to criticise a scheme that is only just being set up. If the scheme does not work, I have no doubt that within a short period of time noble Lords who have spoken tonight, and, I dare say, others, will criticise it in this House.
	I gently chide the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, for referring to a case that I am advised is sub judice. The case was heard today and I understand that the court deferred any decision. I do not think that it is proper that a case that is before the courts should be mentioned in this House at all, and certainly not in detail, when we are discussing these regulations.
	We are accused of setting up a system that is incredibly bureaucratic. I am told that the new contract issued by the Legal Aid Board replaces and updates a wide range of existing guidance and is no longer than the provision which it replaces; indeed it is probably shorter. It is convenient for solicitors to have all this guidance in one place.
	The Government suggest that these regulations have been used as a peg upon which to hang an old argument as regards change taking place in the nature of public funding for civil actions in this country. We have had this debate before and no doubt we shall have it again. However, I commend these regulations on the basis that change had to occur. It was necessary as quality was sometimes too low and too much public money was being spent unwisely. These regulations go some way towards putting into effect what Parliament decided was the proper way to proceed. They should be passed tonight. Therefore I ask the House not to accept the amendment moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, if it is taken to a Division.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for his reply. I regret that it was, not unexpectedly, not particularly helpful. Of course I accept that the arguments which have been raised in this debate were raised on more than one occasion during the passage of what was then the Access to Justice Bill.
	However, I thought that it was not appropriate that this particular set of regulations should be allowed to pass through your Lordships' House on the nod as this is an important set of regulations. Although it is not made under the Access to Justice Act, it is the first of what will no doubt be a lengthy series of regulations that will come before your Lordships' House in the next few months in order to give effect to the principles of the Access to Justice Act. That being so, I thought that it was appropriate to raise this matter for debate by way of an amendment in order to emphasise the depth of the commitment of those on our Benches to a publicly funded system of advice and assistance and the depth of our concern over the damage which we believe that the Access to Justice Act may well do to the future of publicly funded civil legal aid in this country. I accept, of course, that it is not the intention of the Government to cause damage to the provision of publicly-funded legal aid, but I believe that that may well be the result.
	Having said that, this is not an occasion upon which it would be appropriate to divide the House. We shall watch with great care what happens under the Access to Justice Act over the course of the coming months and years. No doubt there will be further debates in the future. But, on this occasion, I would ask the leave of the House to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	On Question, Motion agreed to.

Legal Aid (Prescribed Panels) (Amendment) Regulations 1999

Lord Bach: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 29th November be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Bach: My Lords, I hope that this order will take slightly less time than the previous one.
	These regulations amend the Legal Aid (Prescribed Panels) Regulation 1999. The existing regulations provide that legally aided clinical negligence cases may be carried out only by legal service providers who are members of a prescribed panel. The panel consists of firms who hold a franchise from the board for that type of work.
	I shall say a brief word about clinical negligence panels. It is clear that the clinical negligence panel has led to better results for the clients and less public money being wasted investigating hopeless cases. There are currently 156 firms on that panel, which has been operating now since February 1999. One of the conditions for a clinical negligence franchise, and therefore a prior condition of membership of the prescribed panel, is that the solicitor is a member of either the Law Society's medical negligence panel or the Association of Victims of Medical Accidents panel. Statistics for 1996-97 showed that members of those panels had a higher success rate compared with non-panel members, and recovered on average £48,500 for their clients as compared with £18,000 by non-panel members. For every £1 of taxpayers' money spent, panel members secured £4.10 in damages compared with £1.70 for non-panel members. I would also say--this is an important point which relates back to our last debate--that since the clinical negligence panel has been in operation, the Lord Chancellor's Department has received precisely no complaints about inadequate access.
	There is an important point to be made here. People with a clinical negligence claim, which represents a tragedy in their lives, deserve expert assistance. That is what the health authority or the doctors they are suing will rightly have. People on legal aid deserve the same. We have banished for ever a state of affairs in which a solicitor could get legal aid for his client and take the case all the way through the courts--regardless of his want of expertise. Our reforms are all about quality assurance and giving people access to specialists. The short answer to complaints about the reduction in the number of franchisees is this: there is choice, but among the expert, not the inexpert.
	I was gratified to read the debate in another place on these regulations. The Liberal Democrat spokesman there spoke in support of them. He said that he supported the regulations, especially with regard to specialisation and value for money. I am quite sure that will be the consistent attitude shown in this House, too.
	The regulations before us today amend the existing regulations to create similar requirements for family cases and immigration cases. I should like to explain in a little more detail how a firm of solicitors can obtain a place on the family or immigration panels.
	The only qualification which a firm needs in order to obtain a place on either the family or the immigration panel is to be, for the time being, authorised by a contract with the board to provide representation in that category. As I explained in the earlier debate, a precondition of obtaining a contract is to pass a full or provisional audit against the legal aid franchise quality assured standard. To obtain a franchise, a firm must show competencies in, inter alia, business planning, client care, financial management and equal opportunities. Most importantly, the firm must have a solicitor who can attain the relevant supervisor standard. To do this, solicitors must belong to an accredited panel, such as the Law Society's family panel; have gained experience, knowledge and understanding in the franchise category by doing a specified amount of casework themselves; and they must actively maintain that knowledge and demonstrate that they are sharing that knowledge with their staff. Clients can therefore be confident that, where their cases are being conducted by junior staff, those staff are being supervised by an experienced and knowledgeable solicitor.
	For the first round of contracting only--that is, for contracts that commence on 1st January next year--all firms which have applied for a franchise within the board's published timetable and which have obtained the relevant franchise, were guaranteed a contract in the family and immigration categories. These firms were put on the board's "Bid Panel A". Firms which failed to apply or qualify in time for a franchise have been placed on a reserve panel, "Bid Panel B", and may still qualify for a contract after 1st January provided there are funds available, if there are gaps in access after the award of contracts to Bid Panel A.
	I have said that these regulations establish a family franchise panel and an immigration franchise panel as prescribed panels under Section 32(7) of the Legal Aid Act 1988. Section 32(1) of that Act creates a general right for a person entitled under the Act to receive advice or assistance or representation, to select any legal representative willing to do so to advise, assist or act for him or her. That right may be qualified by regulations made under Section 32(7), so that the person receiving assistance may select only from legal representatives who are for the time being members of a prescribed panel.
	I do not think I need to go through with your Lordships the regulation that sets up the family franchise panel, or the definition of "family proceedings" in Regulation 6; likewise with Regulation 7, under which an immigration franchise panel is set up. Regulation 8 defines the meaning of "immigration proceedings". Perhaps I should remind your Lordships of that definition in the regulations we are considering. The proceedings are defined as,
	"proceedings relating to immigration, nationality or asylum",
	before specified courts. The main types of proceedings covered by this definition are judicial review, habeas corpus and appeals from the Immigration Appeals Tribunal to the Court of Appeal or to the House of Lords.
	The number of people seeking asylum in this country has grown over the past few years and the indications are that the numbers will, for the immediate future, continue to grow. The Legal Aid Board is awarding contracts to meet this increasing demand and has retained a significant reserve which will allow it to expand contracts as the patterns of genuine need become clearer. In particular, the board will be able to react to changes in the geographical distribution of demand following the dispersal of asylum seekers around the country. I hope that that statement will give some comfort, at least, to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.
	Under the general civil contracts, legal aid will for the first time cover representation before the immigration appellate authorities. This will reduce duplication and help to make the system more effective.
	The creation of a quality assured immigration franchise panel also addresses--here I come back to an argument I sought to employ in the previous debate--the problem of unscrupulous advisers who have been able to take advantage of asylum seekers up to now. The franchise process has excluded a substantial number of unscrupulous and incompetent firms from the scheme.
	Concerns have been expressed about the effect of the Government's reform on access to legal services. We have heard them clearly tonight. I have already given the figures as regards 5,000 solicitors accounting for 90 per cent of legal aid expenditure and the number of firms receiving contracts for January being around 5,000. The reality is that most of the firms which have not been awarded contracts have in the past conducted only a few cases each year. In family work, the Legal Aid Board is to award over 4,500 contracts. It is also awarding about 530 contracts in immigration work. A substantial sum is kept in reserve to allow for the number of contracts to be increased should the need arise. We would say, "Compare the number of contracts with the 800 Benefits Agency outlets in England and Wales, or indeed with the number of constituency MPs in England and Wales". I have estimated the figure at about 550.
	It is also the case that the number of firms allowed to do clinical negligence cases has been limited to 156, with no detrimental effect whatsoever on access and no complaints from the public. Contracts are flexible instruments. They can be structured to deal with specific geographical circumstances. Members of the clinical negligence panel, for example--and this is important bearing in mind some of the concerns that have been expressed--are required to travel to their clients where that is appropriate.
	In future, there will be a wider range of alternative methods of delivery for legal advice available to the public. The board will shortly be piloting schemes which include telephone advice, outreach surgeries in rural areas, and second-tier advice services, which will provide advice on difficult areas of law to contracted legal service providers.
	As I said earlier, contracting will be good for the client, good for the taxpayer and good for competent providers. I very much hope that those who are wary of it will see its advantages in due course. I commend the regulations to the House.
	Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 29th November be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].--(Lord Bach.)

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, my party has always supported the principle of franchises and franchise panels. Therefore in principle we do not object to the regulations, although the view that we have also taken is that any firm able to reach the appropriate quality standard should be entitled to a place on the franchise panel. That matter does not appear on the face of the regulations.
	My only question about it was passed to me by the Law Society and highlights its concern with immigration practitioners. There is a serious problem of under-supply of competent practitioners. A considerable number are not competent, but those who are and who are qualified to go onto the panel are in short supply. In that circumstance it is surprising that a number of firms which are qualified to be included on the panel have received contract offers for an amount of work which is substantially less than the amount that they were doing last year.
	Given that one expects the work not only to remain at least at the level reached last year, but to increase quite considerably as the backlog is tackled, perhaps the Minister can say why firms have been offered contracts for less work than they did last year when demand will increase not only because of the exclusion of incompetent operators, but also because of the strong probability of an increase in the overall work. I understand what the noble Lord said about an increase in the reserve, but surely that is required anyway to cope with the probable increase in work.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is a little too sensitive. In both his speeches this evening he gave us a short tour d'horizon of the rationale and justification for the Access to Justice Act. He must expect a little reprise on our part, especially when it is genuinely put in the context of what seem to be current experiences. I hope it is helpful to the Government to hear what is taking place in the field. However much the Government may believe that the way in which this matter is apprehended is itself slewed by the resistance of parts of the profession to these reforms, I believe the Minister will accept that practising solicitors are extraordinarily down to earth and pragmatic. Once rape is inevitable they do not exactly lie back and enjoy it, but they do get on with it.
	The few remarks that I shall now make are genuinely intended to help the Government make the best of this Act. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, has made much of the clinical panel. Indeed, it has worked well. But I believe he will accept that it concerns a very special core group of practitioners. It is not safe to generalise in terms of national needs from this very particular and specialist group of solicitors.
	Perhaps I may add to what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said as regards the way in which the immigration panel is working. One particular problem in the summer was that the Legal Aid Board was urging firms first to get onto the panel and take out franchises and, secondly, to provide more scope and ability to contend with an increased workload. I suspect that at that stage the board thought that there would be a lower take-up for panel work in the immigration field than has been the case.
	The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, referred to the consequences. The reward of the number of cases to those on the panel has been substantially fewer in all cases than were applied for and expected. That does not matter to a firm which has a great deal of private client work and for which immigration work is a relatively small part of its practice, such as my own. But it matters intensely to precisely the kinds of firms that the Government ought to be helping and encouraging; namely, the mainline providers.
	The Immigration Law Practitioners Association held a meeting last week specifically to discuss how things are going. There was a high level of concern about the way in which this particular aspect of the Legal Aid Board's contracting is working. So I mark the Minister's card on that point because I am sure that the Government will want to be flexible and reactive to real problems.
	Finally, I make this point. It is all very well speaking endlessly about quality. We on these Benches have never been in any sense in opposition to the Government on the desire for quality in legal aid any more than we have been against franchising as long as one has open panels. The point that the Government must return to is that it is not realistic in this age to continue talking about quality, let alone increased quality, when the levels of remuneration for practitioners have remained unchanged for six years.
	Those in the House who know a little about the way in which legal fees work may be surprised to know that the standard remuneration per hour for panel work is £48.25 pence. I would love to learn of any of the lawyers who have been adorning the Government Benches who are happy to work at that rate, which is indiscriminate as between the most senior and most junior practitioners. Unless the Government address that issue--with no increase, let alone a real increase, in legal aid remuneration all these years--they will find that their wish for quality, which we share, will disappear into the dust.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, as I said earlier, the Government got their Act. The regulations are entirely consistent with its terms. The Government claim that the Act will give better access to justice to the citizens of this country than its predecessor. I for one am prepared to give them a good year to see whether they are right.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have taken part in the discussion on the regulations. In an attempt to answer the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, about the query of the Law Society concerning contracts for immigration work, we believe that there is substantial evidence that the current volume of cases does not truly reflect the need. Everyone has recognised that the system has been abused by a few unscrupulous providers. Obviously the true level of genuine need cannot be known, but we estimate that it falls somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000 cases.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. The problem that has arisen here is not an overestimate of the amount of work that might be generated as a result of some firms being squeezed out for doing bad work, but what will arise from the firms which will themselves be on the panel and which will be offered contracts for less work than they were doing last year. By definition, those are the competent firms.

Lord Bach: My Lords, no one is disputing that those are competent firms. They would not otherwise be on the panel. However, perhaps the reason that they are to be given less work than they might otherwise have expected is that our estimate of the total amount of work may be rather less than is sometimes thought. That is because the current volume and that generated over the past year has been artificially raised by those who have used unscrupulous methods to run effectively hopeless cases. The true level is between 85,000 and 100,000, taking account of the recent influx of asylum seekers. The pattern of demand is also uncertain because of the exclusion of unscrupulous and incompetent suppliers and the changes arising from dispersal. To retain flexibility, the board has initially allocated 85,000 new matter starts, and has kept in reserve a further 15,000 to be allocated as required. The number of new matter starts required to meet priority need in this area will be kept under review.
	Furthermore, of the 85,000 new matter starts, 80,000 are allocated to solicitors and 5,000 to the not-for-profit sector. That sector is growing and is being encouraged because all would agree that there are certain fields--immigration matters may certainly be one of them--in which properly franchised not-for-profit sector practitioners may be able to offer a real improvement in service.
	I am delighted to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, is keen on quality--I never for a moment doubted that--but the Government would say that if you wish the end, you have to wish the means as well. We would argue--we are sure that we are right on this point--that those means must include much more quality testing of lawyers and the not-for-profit sector before allowing members of the general public to seek advice, assistance and perhaps representation from those who have not always been able to deliver those services in the best way.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Can he confirm that the quality standards that the Legal Aid Board is looking for from voluntary sector providers will be the same as those offered by private sector providers?

Lord Bach: My Lords, in all important respects those standards are bound to be the same. There will not be two separate levels that allow voluntary practitioners not to need to pass as high a test of quality as that of solicitors. I dare say the tests may not be precisely the same because they will be dependent upon the kind of work that is being done. However, voluntary providers will not, as it were, get through merely because they are voluntary providers rather than solicitors.
	I believe that I have covered all the points that have been raised, and on this occasion I do not need to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. I commend the regulations to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Middle East Peace Negotiations

Lord Hylton: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government how they view the current state of peace negotiations in the Middle East.
	My Lords, I have deliberately framed the Question widely so as to cover the whole region, but I shall confine my remarks to the Palestinian National Authority and to Israel.
	I have lived through the occupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza, the unilateral annexation of the Old City and East Jerusalem and the agonies of the long-drawn out intifada. When I last visited those parts, the uprising and the Gulf War had ceased. The prospects for peace seemed good. When, in 1993, the Oslo agreements appeared, I and many others rejoiced, but what has happened since then? Do Her Majesty's Government agree that there has been a terrible waste of time, causing stagnation and frustration, especially among the weakest and those who suffer most from poor education, unemployment and poverty? The result of such conditions is that today more than one-third of Palestinian children show signs of malnutrition. Is it surprising, therefore, that over this period those who believe in violence have gained in strength?
	I should like to examine in some detail the situation as it exists. We find that 91 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza are under Israeli military control, including the large "closed military areas". Only 9 per cent of the territory is under the full jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority. Some 75 per cent of the West Bank and 42 per cent of the Gaza Strip have been expropriated from their owners by the Israeli military administration. Thus, the Palestinians have been deprived of most of their land and only administer a tiny fraction of it. Under the Wye River and a subsequent agreement, a further 5 per cent will be returned to Palestinian administration, but even this will not necessarily be adjacent to those areas already under Palestinian control.
	I warmly welcome the recent opening of a road route between the West Bank and Gaza, together with the removal of the 12 newest illegal settlements. I also welcome Mr Barak's statement, reported on 8th December, that 1,800 new houses in existing settlements would not be authorised. Regrettably, the confidence-building effect of those actions was undermined when Israeli officials immediately said that this was not a total freeze on all new construction in settlements, as they would need,
	"to be expanded to cope with natural increase".
	That was said despite the fact that a significant proportion of settlement houses are now standing vacant.
	The credibility of the Prime Minister and the Government of Israel is not improved by the expropriations and demolitions of Palestinian homes that have continued since they came to office. The same is true for the restrictions placed on movements to and from Gaza airport and of the failure to achieve duty-free access for Palestinian exports and imports from the European Union. I have personal experience of excessive charges levied on a container of humanitarian goods shipped from England to Bethlehem.
	Confidence would also be increased if conditions were improved for the Palestinian Bedouin, both in Israel and in the Occupied Territories, and also for the 120,000 or so Palestinians living in "unrecognised" villages within Israel.
	The single factor that most affects hopes for satisfactory and sustainable results from the "final status" negotiations now beginning lies in the Israeli settlements. If one includes, as is proper, those encircling East Jerusalem and those in the Golan, the population illegally placed in occupied lands easily exceeds 300,000. What is more, the settlements are linked to each other and to Israel by roads by-passing Palestinian villages and towns. The land that will constitute a future Palestinian state is thus divided into hundreds of slices. What is more, even those roads on which Palestinian traffic is allowed are subjected to many check-points. These humiliate drivers and provoke stone-throwing by Palestinian youths, while contributing little to real security.
	I have deliberately gone into some details affecting the assets and the daily lives of all classes of Palestinians. I am not surprised that many are in despair and that many of those who can emigrate in fact do so. They know the daily realities of occupation, settlement and martial law. They have relatives in detention or exile. They can see perfectly clearly the vast disparity and asymmetry in negotiating strength between the State of Israel and the so-called Palestinian Entity, an entity composed, as I have suggested, of salami slices of land and people. It is high time that the civilised nations of the world woke up to this Goliath and David situation--with the difference in this case that David has no sling and no stone. Will Her Majesty's Government give a lead within the European Union, the Commonwealth and the rest of the world to the recognition of this difference and take appropriate consequential action?
	Of course, I recognise Israeli insecurities and fears. Many adults recall their nakedness before Hitler or their sufferings under Soviet rule. There were times when West Jerusalem might have been lost or when the Army of Israel might have been defeated. And yet, look at Israel now--a nuclear power, with armed forces superior to any likely combination of Arab states; a country with military agreements with Turkey and, above all, with an unwritten alliance with the United States. What will Her Majesty's Government and the European Union do to help redress the vast disparity between Israel and the Palestinians?
	I doubt that I can do much as a Back-Bencher to assist the people of Israel to see that their real security lies in having contented Palestinians, both as citizens of Israel and as immediate neighbours. Can our Government act in a helpful way? I look forward to the Government's reply on that point.
	I question whether Israel, with its fragmented public and political opinions, fully wants to be accepted as a friendly neighbour in the Middle East. The peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan do point in that direction. Full acceptance, however, cannot be won while the Palestinians remain impoverished and dispossessed and while huge numbers of their refugees can neither return homewards nor receive compensation for what they have lost. The question of refugees, like the question of entitlement to and sharing of water resources, can probably only be resolved by co-operation between Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Will Her Majesty's Government do everything possible to help establish a mechanism for co-operation, whether formal or informal?
	An opportunity now exists for building peace. Already the agreed timetable is pressing--a framework for final status by next February and full agreement by the end of September 2000. The Palestinians need their own unencumbered state. The Israelis need contented neighbours and acceptance as a regional partner. The region itself needs a format for co-operation. The obstacles are fears and frustrations, together with unattainable and self-defeating aspirations. Will Her Majesty's Government and their European allies, as the main trading partners of the whole region, use every effort in the search for a sustainable solution? Will they intervene on behalf of the poorest and the voiceless? That would be particularly appropriate in this season of Ramadan and Hanukkah and as we approach the jubilee year of 2000.
	I take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords who are to contribute to the debate and I look forward to a positive reply from the noble Baroness the Minister.

Lord Janner of Braunstone: My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for raising this matter, particularly at the moment because of three factors: Syria, Barak in charge in Israel, and a visit which my noble friend Lord Ahmed and I recently made to the Middle East together. It is good that the debate takes place when the Syrian track is reopening. I suspect that Prime Minister Tony Blair and my noble friend Lord Levy had something to do with that. I am sure that we should all be congratulating both of them on any part that they have played in what we hope will be a most important step forward.
	Prime Minister Barak was in Britain recently. He said not once but several times that he is committed to ensuring that we move as fast as possible towards peace in the Middle East. We know that the situation has totally changed from the situation which existed when Netanyahu was Israel's Prime Minister. I know that my noble friend Lord Ahmed will join me in saying what an extraordinary visit it was paid by the first Muslim Peer with a Jewish Peer, each of us active in our own communities and leaders in them. We were received in Israel by the Foreign Minister, by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres, by the heads of the Foreign Office and others. We then moved to Ramallah to see Arafat and many of his team and we went on to be received by King Abdullah, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the head of the Parliament in Jordan.
	That could not have happened a few years ago. It is symbolic and it is real. Throughout we found that people wanted peace. So I was terribly disappointed to hear the very negative speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. I hoped that he would look for the common ground and not for problems; that he would feel that it is rather better not to preach from here to people over there as to how they should carry on their negotiations--least of all when those negotiations are going well and all concerned want them to succeed.
	The discussion with King Abdullah was a private one but it is fair to say--I am sure he will not mind if I say this--that he expressed his hope and his belief that Barak would go as far as he could and as quickly as he could in the search for peace. I learnt a long time ago that when you have leaders of countries who are sensitive to each other and like each other, that is a vast movement. I was very privileged to spend most of a morning with President Sadat shortly before he was murdered. I remember two outstanding things that he said. First, he had just attacked Begin for something Begin had said. I said to him, "Look, you are trying to negotiate peace with this man. Why do you attack?" He said, "You must understand that Menachem and I are friends. We know what we are trying to do. We are each going for peace. But we each have our own constituencies. He understands that I must satisfy my people or I cannot bring them towards peace and I recognise that Prime Minister Begin, in the democracy which he heads, has to bring his people with him".
	I was thinking about that when the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, was speaking. It is all very well to talk about the dreadful horrors of the past of many of Israel's people, but the reality of today is that it is a very vibrant democracy, that Barak has to bring his people with him, that if they feel that he is simply giving away territory without receiving safety and security in return they will not back him, that they will have a referendum which he has to win, that they will have elections which he has to win, and that unless they feel that he is dealing with their sensitivities and their security in a way which they would like, he is out, because that is a democracy. It is good, is it not, that King Abdullah and Barak understand and like each other? I have the feeling that President Arafat, too, was anxious to achieve peace and that he understood the way the negotiations had to go. They will be tough; they will go up and down; they will have a momentum. But the leaders know and understand each other, and now President Assad is also in the team. So it is a good time.
	I discussed with President Assad the second set of major issues. Refugees and water are huge issues; Jerusalem is an even greater one. I remember him saying that we should achieve all the common ground that we could at the beginning and begin the moves towards peace, then deal with water and refugees, and leave Jerusalem until last. He said that if Jerusalem was dealt with beforehand, we should not succeed; the issue was too sensitive. But if everything else is decided and the parties see their way to peace, then they will be prepared to hang flags in the appropriate places and to understand each other's sensitivities on the central place of the three great religions of the world.
	The leaders today, all of whom I know, are anxious to achieve peace for their people. Yes, they understand that if the parties have life and food and the needs of decent living together side by side, peace will live. Yes, they understand that they have to satisfy their own electorates or they will not succeed, or the people who are waiting in the wings will not succeed them in the way that they would want.
	So what can we do? Her Majesty's Government are right to encourage the path towards peace and to smooth it out in any way they can. It is right to encourage the parties to come together, hold discussions and move towards a settlement, and to attempt to smooth the common ground so that the parties will walk on it together. The Government are right not to spend their time attacking one party or the other--for example, on the one side to put the Palestinian case with the great emphasis which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has placed on it, and on the other emphasise the differences with the Israelis and their case. I do not propose to do that. I believe that we in this House can help by contributing towards bringing the parties on to common ground. When there is peace in that area, we shall all rejoice in the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, a Muslim leader, and myself, a Jewish leader, were so warmly received on that extraordinarily memorable visit.

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, I, too, extend thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for sharing with us his wisdom and his realism. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, is no longer in this House. The debate that he introduced in May followed the election victory of Ehud Barak. At that time, we expressed some optimism about the outcome of the negotiations. It is good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Janner, speak on this subject, and in particular to be told about his visit with the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed.
	I sense that, this time, there is rather more caution. The Israeli Prime Minister is a skilful politician who can give the impression of much more progress than is in fact taking place. However, having read his Labour Party address a few days ago in Tel Aviv, in spite of his hesitations in relation to SCR242, which seemed to me peculiar, I am sure he is sincere in his belief that at last the peace process is really taking place.
	In our previous debate, I referred to the continuing illegal and discriminatory policies of the Israeli Government, especially with regard to basic human rights such as land, water and agriculture. Little of that has changed. I referred to land confiscation and the tolerance of the Palestinians, especially in the face of the pre-election wave of illegal settlements. It is true that the new government have finally ended that particular bout of oppression and, as my noble friend said, that is welcome. But it does not make the earlier settlements any more legal. Those, and the ring-roads, remain another albatross around Palestinian necks while they are forced to make concession after concession to peace.
	I want to concentrate on one group of refugees who are in danger of being left out of the peace settlement. I refer to the Palestinians in Lebanon, who number about 350,000 out of the 3½ million who are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, plus many more, perhaps a further 1 million, who are unregistered. It should be remembered that the vast majority of Palestinians are refugees--some 70 per cent of the total.
	Most noble Lords will remember the horrors of Sabra and Chatila camps in 1982, whose very names recall the vicious massacre of innocent refugees. I have a personal memory of that crisis, having helped to recruit medical teams who flew out to work alongside the staff of the Middle East Council of Churches. If it was unforgettable for us, it was far more so for the persecuted families in those camps, especially the children, who will now be in their thirties. Those third generation refugees are among the poorest and most neglected groups anywhere in the world. They still live in the same squalid and overcrowded conditions and have endured years of ill-treatment by the Lebanese authorities as third-class citizens.
	The Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Peter Hain, expressed the Government's routine concern for Palestinian refugees in the debate in another place two weeks ago. Whatever our suspicion of governments, we can take that to be genuine, knowing his record in the human rights field. He said that they were victims of "an appalling historic injustice". He repeated Britain's support for Resolution 194, which for over 50 years has theoretically guaranteed the Palestinian right to return. It was of course a Labour government which originally signed that resolution in 1948.
	But there was no recognition in Peter Hain's speech of the special plight of refugees in Lebanon. As Dr Phyllis Starkey, who led the debate, pointed out, refugees in Lebanon have suffered especially badly because of the civil war and the attitude of the Lebanese, who have both resented them and pleaded problems of their own. They are more severely restricted than Palestinians elsewhere, having no passports and rarely being allowed work permits outside the camps. Armed soldiers, tanks and checkpoints surround the camps, some of which are virtually besieged. Two-thirds of the refugees are unemployed. I understand that in some camps 90 per cent are unemployed. The result is that their families depend almost entirely on the services provided by UNRWA. That situation remains unchanged despite the articles of various refugee conventions piously repeated by our government since 1948.
	Palestinians in Lebanon are suffering not just from poverty but from a form of collective depression. They are not like other refugees. Along with other 1948 refugees in other countries, they have little or no expectation of becoming recognised. Not only are they stateless now; they have no prospects of belonging to the Palestinian state. It seems that they may be left out altogether. The Palestinian authority, although it may claim hypothetical sovereignty, does not directly represent them and is unlikely to argue on their behalf during the final status talks. The only country which may be able to speak up for them is Jordan, but only if it can be sure of material support from countries such as Britain.
	Even the United Nations, which has provided for these refugees since 1948, may be in some sense about to abandon them. Ironically, since the establishment of the Palestinian authority, the status of UNRWA has been in decline, and funding has steadily decreased. In the absence of any other support for these refugees, this is no time for donors to withdraw. I hope that the noble Baroness will confirm that the UK will keep up its present commitments to UNRWA and reaffirm the Government's undertaking to refugees in Lebanon under Resolution 194--which remains a legal guarantee given by the whole international community of their right to return and to compensation. If the Minister can do so, that would certainly be heard in the camps in Lebanon.
	The noble Baroness may be able to comment also on the proposed international compensation fund, which will have to be generous enough to support all refugees, not just those displaced in 1967. Israel has agreed, although I understand that it does not wish to contribute to the fund.
	It sometimes helps in these debates to hear voices from those close to the situation. A few days ago, an organised assembly of young Palestinians took place in Lebanon at a youth centre at Ain al-Hilweh in Sidon, sponsored by Save the Children. They came together from refugee camps all over Lebanon with the aim of informing the world of their predicament. They called for protection against violence, for the right to live in peace, and for protection from poverty and exploitation. They want the right to express their views, the right to food and places to play. Many are even denied access to a playground. Above all, they argued for the right to a nationality, the lifting of the siege around their camps and the right to return to their homeland.
	Most poignantly, those children asked that the word "refugee" be removed from their identity cards because it makes them a target for discrimination. It gives none of the rights or protection that refugees have been granted under the 1953 convention. To those children, to be a refugee demotes the status of a human being. Is it surprising that in desperation at the lack of any solution, some refugees have tried to find refuge in countries outside the Middle East?
	I ask the Minister to comment on a report from human rights groups in France that 37 refugees from South Lebanon who had sought asylum in France via Syria have been returned by France to Damascus, where some of them have been put in prison. They are not political militants but ordinary people with families, many personally known to the NGOs in Lebanon, who are trying to join their relatives in Europe. Sadly, we are learning at Christmas not only that there is no room at the inn but that police are barring the stable door. The peace process is flawed because, as the children in Sidon demonstrate, the parties to that process are ignoring a human crisis that may yet have dangerous consequences for the whole region.

Lord Clarke of Hampstead: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for providing the opportunity to seek the views of the Government on the current state of peace negotiations in the Middle East. I am confident that every member of the House is pleased that meaningful dialogue is taking place in a number of areas that have given concern for a long time. Real progress has been made and will continue to be made, due in no small measure to the leadership of Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak. Since becoming prime minister of the only democracy in the Middle East, Mr. Barak has shown real vision as he strives to attain peace with security for his people. His bravery comes as no surprise to those who recall his gallantry as his country's most decorated soldier.
	We welcome the recent breakthrough in talks with the Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad. Both Prime Minister Barak and President Assad have signalled positive messages that can only help future discussions to the benefit of both countries.
	Similarly there are hopeful signs in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian talks. No one can pretend that there are not problems yet to be resolved. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, drew attention to some of them this evening. Those problems will no doubt exercise greater minds than mine in the next few months, but I am sure that most people are heartened by a comment made by Prime Minister Barak on his recent visit to London. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to the final status question and the timetable framework. Prime Minister Barak was asked if he thought it was realistic to talk about a framework for final status by next February and agreement by the end of next year. He replied:
	"If there is a will, there's a way.
	"I thought that it was an historic comment when he said:
	"As my partner, Chairman Arafat, used to say, we have a major responsibility and we have to live up to the challenge. It is up to us. If we fail to do it, the alternative is being dragged into a new round of violence."
	I want to say how much I welcome the Government's pledge of a further £50 million in financial aid for the next three years. Another £50 million is expected to be contributed by European Union aid programmes to the Palestinians over the next five years. The debate also gives me the opportunity to advise your Lordships of a significant initiative last month. Under the auspices of the Trades Union Congress, representatives of Palestinian and Israeli trade unions met for a week-long joint seminar in the UK. The seminar-- which was hosted by Sir Ken Jackson and his union, the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union--considered how inward investment to the region could be assisted to the mutual benefit of Israelis and Palestinians. The seminar also spent time teaching British experiences through partnerships with employers and employees and trade unions with governments.
	The TUC-Labour Friends of Israel initiative was considered a great success by all the participants. Although it was a pilot, I have no doubt that the scheme will be repeated in years to come. The TUC has acknowledged with grateful thanks the assistance of the British Ambassador to Israel, whose active participation--in terms of transportation, visas and entry permits--made the venture possible. I echo the thanks of the TUC to our ambassador in Israel for his work.
	It is essential that the international community gives every possible assistance to all the parties involved in the peace process. I respectfully suggest that some of the rich oil states in the region could provide more economic aid to assist the Palestinians as they face up to the challenges of economic development, protecting the environment and the resettlement of refugees in their own countries.
	A real threat to the future of the region is the continuing situation in Iran. Relations between Muslims and Jews are not being helped by the regime in Iran, which has locked up a number of citizens on charges of alleged espionage. Among them are 13 Jews. Those unfortunate people, together with a number of Christians and Muslims, are not able--so as far as can be ascertained--to communicate with their friends. Is my noble friend the Minister able to say something about those particular people?
	Iran still supports terrorism and is capable of producing weapons of mass destruction. Any hopes of a lasting peace in the region must take account of the constant threat to that peace by regimes that are not democratic and which abuse human rights. There is a real and proper role for the international community, which has to work as hard as it can to build democracies. In a region of 100 million people, only 5 million in Israel enjoy democratic systems and structures. Any help that our Government can give to extending democracy to the rest of the region should be encouraged and welcomed by all who are working for lasting peace in that troubled part of the world.

Viscount Waverley: My Lords, I was not intending to refer to the provocative road network and settlements policy. I do so only in the hope that they are eventually recognised as an impediment.
	The peace process has nevertheless entered a new phase: President Barak's election; the testing final status issues--including that of Jerusalem--are upon us; and Syria shows tentative signs of dialogue and with it a greater degree of success, together with the Lebanon track. Beyond that and arguably the most important, there is the establishment of conditions to make the process work--taking the hearts and minds of the people of the region, not just those of the leaders. Arabs and Jews must integrate, tearing down apartheid barriers, while mutually respecting the principles and culture of the other.
	Britain recently played its part, which augurs well. The importance of inward investment, not just as a peace dividend but as a key ingredient in ensuring fair distribution of regional assets and an equitable economic rebalance, is fundamental and it is the best guarantee of Israel's future security. For example, I introduced and oversaw negotiations at arm's length between BG plc and the Palestinian Authority which resulted in a gas concession being offered by Chairman Arafat. I was delighted, and it was absolutely right, that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, who I note is not in his place this evening, officiated at the signing ceremony in London. That was a recognition of unselfish partnership on all sides. I understand, however, that the Americans, and by extension the World Bank, expressed some concern that their interests were not involved in the negotiations. Nobody doubts that American investment is fundamental and that many opportunities will exist for its participation. The United States has worked tirelessly over the years, but it is essential that Israel's principal trading partner, the European Union, is active and successful in regional development.
	The Palestinians have in the Palestinian Commercial Services Corporation (PCSC), headed by Mohammed Rashid, a vehicle to attract investment. The PCSC is a public body, run along the lines of our Crown Agents but with private sector objectivity. It releases no profits or dividends but retains them for re-investment. The criteria for this body have the task of jump-starting the Palestinian economy and encouraging and managing Palestinian opportunities. The body is a one-stop-shop model, involving risk-taking and job creation. Some put its endeavours as the creation of 50 per cent of all new jobs.
	Nobody should be in any doubt about the role that cheap power creation can play in any economy, with the additional benefit that it is controlled by the beneficiaries and there is no need to import. Thus, the Palestinians will never be held hostage by the need for a key ingredient. Cheap power creates competitive industry and so will transform the economy. It is a win-win-win situation, in which the Palestinians are sensitive to American concerns by way of the supply of American-owned power station interests (the Enron Corporation). I anticipate that there will be further equitable involvement by the Americans. They need not be concerned.
	Fast investment is undeniably required by the Palestinians. Although the world-class input by BG plc was negotiated in short order, I can vouch that the negotiations were transparent, inasmuch as any negotiations of this importance can realistically be, in round-the-clock discussions. BG mercifully stepped in where the Italians had failed to perform after a full year. Speed was of the essence. I pay a personal tribute to the Prime Minister and to the Foreign Office Minister, Mr Peter Hain, for their pivotal support.

Lord Ahmed: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating this debate. My contribution this evening will be very brief. My noble friend Lord Janner has spoken of our visit last month with the help of the Maimonides Foundation. For the first time leaders of the Muslim and Jewish communities visited the Middle East. I am very proud and honoured to have been with my noble friend when we met the Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli leaders. We talked in both private and public about issues of concern to the people of the Middle East. I should like to share with your Lordships a few of the achievements, concerns and expectations in relation to the peace process.
	Like many other noble Lords, I begin by expressing my delight at the news that in a few days Mr Barak will meet the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouk al-Shara, in Washington for crucial talks on the Israeli-Syrian peace deal. I believe that the role of the Syrians is important to the achievement of a lasting peace in the Middle East. I welcome Mr Barak's promise to withdraw from the Israeli self-declared security zone in South Lebanon by July 2000 and the new peace deal with Syria based on a withdrawal from the Golan Heights. We sensed while in Israel that over 70 per cent of the Israeli population supported a peace process based on land for peace. Generally, people are very optimistic and positive and we should support them.
	I believe that there are three major issues of importance to be resolved in the peace process involving the status of refugees, new settlements and Jerusalem. As to refugees, we had some interesting meetings with the leaders. King Abdullah was optimistic and expressed complete confidence in the good faith of Prime Minister Barak. He said that there were about 1.3 million refugees in Jordan but that in reality only about 50,000 would want to return to Palestine. One is not talking about millions of refugees who want to return. However, the question of refugees will give rise to compensation. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, referred to the refugees in Lebanon. I do not believe that all of the refugees will want to return. However, that is a real concern. When one refers to large numbers it frightens people in democracies, as my noble friend Lord Janner said. The leadership must sell the idea to the public before the peace plans can become a reality.
	As to new settlements, Chairman Arafat has expressed concern. We were assured by the Israeli leadership that the intentions of Mr Barak and his Government were clear and that they would be able to achieve a framework agreement on final status issues with the Palestinians by early next year. Again, I am quite confident that that could be achieved by the goodwill shown so far.
	I turn to the status of Jerusalem. I do not have to remind your Lordships of the importance of that great city to the great Ibrahamic religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. For that reason I believe that it is the most difficult and sensitive issue for us all. I wish everyone well in trying to achieve a lasting peace agreement in all those areas. I believe that Muslims, Christians and Jews can work together to achieve that and that we should do all we can in our power to do so.
	Finally, I too congratulate Her Majesty's Government on the important and positive role that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has played in securing the agreements so far and working with all parties in the Middle East.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, although this has been a short debate, it has also in many ways been an optimistic one. It is difficult to divorce the particular developments that we are now seeing at the strategic level in the Middle East from the internal developments within Israel itself and in its relationship to the Palestinian National Authority. I shall return to that point, but perhaps I may also add my voice to the many that have thanked the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for taking the initiative in making sure that the debate took place.
	I was delighted also to hear the story of the visit of the noble Lords, Lord Ahmed and Lord Janner, to Israel, Jordan and Palestine a short while ago. It is extremely encouraging, and an example to many, that reconciliation is not only possible but can actually be followed by other people. I congratulate them both on taking that initiative. I hope that they will keep it up and that they will be followed by others. I should like to put on record the thanks that many of us feel towards them for taking such an imaginative idea further and developing Judaic, Muslim and Christian relations in the whole of the Middle East, which is crucial, where once a good relationship is established, a great deal may be achieved.
	I turn to the strategic relationship, adding my voice to the many in this debate, but also uttering a word of warning. It is an astonishing breakthrough that, after four years in which no talks occurred at all between Syria and Israel, at this stage there should not only be talks beginning within the next few days, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, said, but a great deal of the groundwork for establishing a peace settlement between Syria and Israel already under way. Indeed, it is partly because that groundwork has been quietly undertaken behind the scenes that the ambitious timetable to which the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, referred, is already becoming a possible reality.
	However, I want to give a word of warning, because in the relationship between Syria and Israel, where undoubtedly Syria is at least in part driven by the ill health of the President of Syria and his desire to reach some kind of stable relationship with Israel while he is still in command, there are two difficult issues. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, referred to one, which is the difficult issue of water. The Golan is of strategic significance not only to the whole of that part of Syria, but also to the Galilee region of Israel. The second is the difficult issue of where the new border should actually be. Israel understandably believes that the Golan Heights should be what they say they are, while Syria is pressing for a border that would run along the coastline of the Sea of Galilee. That is going to be quite a difficult one to resolve, but not impossible, provided that agreement can be reached on the division of the crucial waters of that part of the Middle East.
	It is exciting that there is a direct link between what will happen in Syria and the Golan Heights on the one side, and what may well happen in Lebanon. Lebanon is a country which has been effectively destroyed; once one of the most prosperous and successful countries in the Middle East, it has had nothing but a kind of half existence for at least 25 years, although recently there have been real attempts to rebuild Lebanon and to make it once again a prosperous country. It is an example of the way in which the prospects for the Middle East have allowed themselves to be destroyed by the battle over who has the major authority in Lebanon. It is crucial to bring Lebanon into whatever settlement is finally reached.
	I find it moving that the Prime Minister of Israel said that he did not wish to preside over a future in which young Israeli boys found themselves in the miserable no-man's land of South Lebanon, continually defending their country against the possibility of terrorist attacks upon it, and that there must be some better way to resolve the problem. I wish them well because I believe that agreement about the border will imply an understanding that Syria and Lebanon will do their best to restrain terrorist attacks. In that context, the Republic of Ireland is not a bad example of how gradually to reduce and control terrorist attacks. Perhaps Lebanon will again resume its role as an important part of the economic recovery of the Middle East.
	However, I do not want to suggest total disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. There is no question but that the Palestinian Authority has something far from a viable state to control. Some aspects of its control are autocratic and not attractive, as indicated by the recent declaration protesting against some aspects of the Palestinian Authority. Yet there is no doubt that it is an extraordinarily difficult state let to try to administer.
	In conclusion, once Israel feels safe and does not continually have to defend itself against external enemies, the possibility of greater reconciliation and of give and take becomes real. It is on the agreement with Syria that, paradoxically, an agreement with Palestine, which allows some of the divisions so eloquently described by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, could be changed and the desert could again bloom like a rose. The two are interdependent and it is only by helping and seeking peace on the strategic level that we shall gain peace at the local level.
	My final comment concerns the roles of the United Kingdom and the European Union. We understand that the Foreign Secretary is in Berlin attending the discussions between the European Union and Israel. There is a tendency for the EU to be viewed as the body which, ultimately, silently pays the bills. I hope that it will go a little further, not only paying the bills but agreeing to bring its weight to bear in achieving greater reconciliation. Those of us who studied the process recognise that many in Israel and the Arab states would welcome more often the presence of the EU in the negotiating structures as opposed to a process that is sometimes largely dominated by the United States. Europe has a serious role to play both economically and politically. I hope that we shall see Europe willing to play that role in the next few crucial months to help Mr Assad and Mr Barak finally to achieve a lasting peace settlement.

Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on securing this debate. It is timely indeed in the light of the US Secretary of State's visit to the region last week and the recent positive announcements on the Israeli-Syrian peace track.
	I find it difficult to share some of the pessimism expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, although I understand where it came from. Thanks to the recent implementation of a number of initiatives, we should not underestimate the signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. In their different ways, the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreements, the Hebron protocol, the Wye River memorandum and now the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement have marked milestones in the quest for peace. The PLO has revised its charter and President Arafat has pledged that there will be no return to violence. Now the Israeli-Syrian negotiations, dormant for so long, have been revived. Many of those are optimistic signs.
	I want to take up some of the points raised tonight and I shall begin by alluding to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on the role of Britain and the international community. When she said she had reached her penultimate point, I was slightly surprised that she did not intend to mention the importance of the European Union in this context, but I was delighted that finally she did. I share many of her comments. There has been consensus in UK Government policy on the route to the goal of peace. That route is based on respect for the principles of international law and the tenets of land for peace.
	The principles enshrined in UN Security Council resolutions held the key to unlocking peace, first, between Egypt and Israel and then between Jordan and Israel. In my view, they will ultimately unlock peace between Israel and the Palestinians so that the historic goal of a comprehensive just and lasting Arab-Israeli peace on the basis of security for the Israelis and prosperity, justice and self-determination for the Palestinian people, with statehood as an option, can be realised.
	The breakdown of the talks, restarted only by the visit of the US Secretary of State, underlines the importance of the role that international mediation, particularly American, can and has played in the peace process.
	Your Lordships will remember that the Foreign Secretary launched a tripartite plan for the European Union to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process in March 1998, which included a strengthening of the European role in the peace process. The Minister will be aware of suggestions that, following the Israeli elections this year, there was a real opportunity to promote a European initiative.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Janner, on the role that this House and indeed the Government can play. I agree that there is a very important role for a European initiative. That is separate but complementary to the American process, to ensure that the deadlock which has dogged the peace process for two years was broken. In the light of criticisms that the Government's previous initiative did not succeed in securing a stronger role for Europe in the peace process, what efforts have the Government taken to secure a fresh European initiative and to make use of our many contacts and our long historical ties with the countries of the region?
	Further, I think the Minister will be aware that recently Shimon Peres said there was no room in the peace process for a European mediator as well as an American mediator. To what extent does the Minister consider that this reflects on European efforts, including the Foreign Secretary's initiative and the recent visit by the Prime Minister's personal representative, the noble Lord, Lord Levy? A number of noble Lords have referred to obstacles in the path of peace. We are all only too well aware that there are still many obstacles in the path of peace and that these obstacles are formidable, ranging from hurdles which are placed in the way of peace by those implacably opposed to this process, to the simple truth that without prosperity peace cannot take root and without peace prosperity cannot grow.
	However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, when he highlighted one important inextricable link between peace, security and economic prosperity. It is clear that the pace of economic growth in the Middle East cannot far outstrip the pace of the peace process. Economic prosperity and peace must be mutually reinforcing. If peace is to best able and secure then it must be seen to promote and provide a dividend in terms of economic progress. It is a well known fact that the Palestinian standard of living has fallen by some 40 per cent since the signing of the Oslo accords, while high unemployment rates undercut the support for the peace process in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Jordan.
	Instead of enjoying the tangible benefits of peace, the Palestinian economy has suffered a severe downturn. In addition to the long-running programme of British aid to the Palestinians, what action are the Government taking to help create an environment where economies can flourish, in order to nurture and sustain peace, so that the people in the back streets of Gaza and the West Bank see real improvement in their economic position, enabling them to discover both their faith in the peace process and their hope for the future?
	I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, raised the role of Prime Minister Barak and President Assad. Here I am in close agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. She happens to be my only political colleague this evening on this side of the House showing, as we do, an interest in this important subject. Certainly I regret that there are not more of your Lordships present to hear what I believe has been an excellent debate. The noble Baroness alluded to the importance of the negotiations which are under way at the moment and to the vital importance given by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, to the Syrian-Israeli negotiations.
	In my view, it is absolutely requisite for a just, lasting and comprehensive peace for the Middle East that the twin track of the Syrian-Israeli negotiations and the Israeli-Lebanese negotiations is also embraced. This is an absolutely integral part of the peace process, without which the promise of a new era of hope and prosperity for the entire region cannot be realised.
	We all welcome the optimism expressed by Israel and Syria following the announcement of the resumption of peace negotiations after a hiatus of almost four years. This new effort is a breakthrough indeed, and we wish the meeting in Washington on Wednesday every success as the Syrians and Israelis return to the negotiating table to take the next courageous steps on the journey towards a peace of justice and a peace of security. An Israeli-Syrian peace agreement would have key regional benefits, covering a secure Israeli-Lebanese border, an ending of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the isolation of those parties who continue to reject peace and reconciliation and the gradual normalisation of relations between the Arab world and Israel. Therefore, heavy responsibility lies on the shoulders of Prime Minister Barak and President Assad to bring peace to the Israeli and Syrian people and to ensure that once again they are not disappointed. This is a historic endeavour, but I heeded the words of warning of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. There should be no illusions. The issue of water rights, demilitarised zones, the possible presence of international troops and Israel's desire to maintain a listening post on Mount Hernan will all be the subject of intense, exhausting and arduous negotiation.
	If there is one point which I should like to emphasise in my remarks this evening, it is this. It is critical that the prospect of a comprehensive settlement acts as an impetus and an incentive to both the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian tracks, and that progress on one track is not achieved at the expense of the other. The process must remain inclusive, focused and expeditious or it will not succeed. There will be no winners from an approach of rivalry and competition between the two tracks.
	I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, that the new spirit of optimism in the region allows us to hope that the peace process, so many times derailed, is now back on track. Bold and courageous measures which broaden and deepen the progress already made will still be needed to end decades of conflict and to create a future of permanent peace. With those words, the Government can be assured of our full support while they demonstrate that Britain is a partner and a friend to the peace process, playing a constructive and supportive role, and working to the common objective of a peace settlement that brings security to all the countries of the region and, above all, justice to all the people of the region.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for tabling this Question. This is a good moment to debate the Government's policy towards the Middle East. Both hope and tensions are increasing on the Palestinian track as the parties grapple with the difficult problems that have to be resolved if they are to reach agreement by February on a framework agreement for a permanent settlement. The United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, has just returned from a trip to the region, with a breakthrough on the Syrian track.
	I have listened carefully to your Lordships' comments. I should like to start by welcoming the progress on the Syrian track. I understand the concern voiced by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, in relation to the Lebanese refugees. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, and the Syrian President, Al-Assad, have shown the necessary statesmanship to open a door that can lead to peace. I believe that their public messages to one another have been unprecedented in their warmth. Bilaterally and through the European Union we have encouraged both sides to restart talks. The Americans have, of course, done the same. The result of those efforts is an agreement to meet in Washington this week to resume the negotiations which came to a halt in 1996. That is a courageous decision. The Prime Minister has welcomed the agreement to resume negotiations and is writing to Prime Minister Barak and President Assad to congratulate them.
	Progress in negotiations will have an immediate effect in the region. We look forward to the implementation of UNSCR 425 and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon. All sides have a real responsibility to ensure that withdrawal, which we all want, is orderly and does not result in chaos in Lebanon. Much the best way of preventing unrest is for withdrawal to be part of a broader peace agreement with Syria and Lebanon. Last week's breakthrough means that that is a real possibility and offers much the best prospect of peace in Lebanon and security for northern Israel.
	The United Kingdom enjoys good relations with both Israel and Syria. The Government offer our full support to both parties to achieve rapid progress.
	On the Palestinian track, we welcome the real progress that has been made since the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement in September. The release of Palestinian prisoners, the further redeployment of Israeli troops and the restart of permanent status negotiations have all started to rebuild the relationship between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian authority.
	The opening of the southern safe passage, along which the Foreign Secretary travelled on the day after its opening, has had an immediate effect on the well-being of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as have the increased number of work permits for Palestinians and the reduction in housing demolitions and ID card confiscation in Jerusalem.
	However, there are undoubted difficulties. The redeployment of troops scheduled for 15th November is delayed. The release of a third group of Palestinian prisoners before the holy month of Ramadan has not yet taken place. At the heart of those problems is how, and with how much consultation, decisions on those steps are to be taken. It is for the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way forward and we encourage them to do so as soon as possible to allow the process to continue towards the main goal of a permanent status agreement.
	The parties, as many noble Lords will know, are committed to using their best efforts to reach a framework agreement on permanent status by February 2000 and a permanent agreement by September 2000. Both sides have already started to address the key issues which will define how Israelis and Palestinians will live together in the new millennium.
	It is not for us to provide solutions on the permanent status issues: borders between Israel and a Palestinian entity, the status of Jerusalem, arrangements for the refugees' rights over fresh water in the region and settlements in the Occupied Territories. However, we have a responsibility to put forward ideas and provide support to enable a just, comprehensive and durable settlement to be reached.
	The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, in particular, together with others raised the issue of the Palestinian and Lebanese refugees. I am pleased that favourable comment has already been made about the statement by my honourable friend the Minister of State at the first sitting of the new parallel Chamber in the other place. I can reassure the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, that we are firmly committed to helping to improve the lives of refugees and to resolving the refugee issue based on the UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
	Palestinians in Lebanon are a special case. There is no intention that they should be left out of the arrangement for Palestinian refugees elsewhere. We shall continue to support the UNRWA. Our bilateral contributions have increased by 33 per cent since 1997 and my honourable friend the Foreign Secretary witnessed the excellent work in October. The international donor community has a responsibility and detailed arrangements will be made as the parameters for the final settlement are agreed.
	The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, raised the issue of the 13 Jews together with other Christians and Muslims who have been detained in Iran on spying charges. I can assure the noble Lord that Her Majesty's Government have raised our concerns about that case at a high level with the Government of Iran and are keeping the situation under active consideration.
	We welcome Prime Minister Barak's action over settlement outposts and his statement that there will be no new construction permits issued during negotiations. However, we remain concerned about Israeli settlement activity and expansion. Settlements are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace. We understand the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, in that regard.
	A further threat to the Middle East peace process is the multilateral track. I say that in response to a number of comments made by a number of noble Lords about the issue of water. The multilateral track is often overlooked, but it is important because it offers an opportunity for regional states and the international community to support the peace process and increase co-operation on water, refugees and disarmament. It provides a forum for such issues to be discussed and a practical conduit for practical co-operation between neighbours. I hope that with negotiations on the Syrian track about to resume, the multilateral track can also restart early in the new year.
	We are committed to supporting progress on all tracks of the peace process. That commitment is based on the implementation of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace. Britain and the European Union have an important role to play in the peace process. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that the European Union special envoy for the Middle East process, Mr Moratinos, plays an important role in emphasising the complementary role that Europe can play in the region.
	The key requirements of a lasting agreement on the Palestinian track are that it should give real hope and opportunity to the Palestinian people, including enabling them to exercise their right to self-determination, and provide real security for Israel. That requires vision on the part of both Israelis and Palestinians. It requires each side to move towards the other. Neither will get all it wants. Compromise will be essential. But peace will be the prize for everyone in the region.
	We shall encourage the parties towards a visionary settlement, creating a viable Palestinian entity and providing security for Israel. We are also providing substantial practical assistance, both bilaterally and through the European Union. We have pledged £50 million in bilateral aid for the next three years and expect to contribute another £50 million to European Union aid programmes over the next five years. The European Union and individual member states have collectively been the largest donor to the Palestinians.
	Our bilateral aid focuses on developing primary healthcare projects and a strategic capacity for health planning and management; increasing access to water for isolated communities; improving teaching methods and skills management; and strengthening Palestinian institutions by developing a unified, modernised legal system, an effective public administration and a democratic, professional and accountable legislative body. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said in relation to his analogy with David and Goliath, but I am sure he knows his Bible well and will remember what happened during that confrontation. We understand that analogy and are providing technical advice and legal expertise to the Palestinian Negotiation Affairs Department as part of our programme of bilateral assistance. The aim of this aid is to facilitate the smooth and efficient conduct of negotiations. Such support is necessary if Palestinian negotiators are to have the confidence to reach difficult agreements with Israel.
	We want to see a democratic, transparent and accountable Palestinian machinery of government. This includes respect for basic freedoms, including the freedom of speech. The Palestinian people deserve no less. It also offers the greatest possible reassurance to Israel.
	The Government remain closely engaged in the peace process. Prime Minister Barak has been in London twice since his election and spent an additional night in Manchester when a baggage handler's truck hit his aircraft as it stopped for refuelling. President Arafat met the Prime Minister last month. King Abdullah of Jordan was here last week and met the Defence Secretary. Egyptian Foreign Minister Moussa was here the week before that and we are in close contact with the Syrians and Lebanese too.
	We welcome the trade union initiative which the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, mentioned, as an example of co-operation which can support the political process. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, this has been an optimistic debate and we welcome the support that has echoed from all sides of the House. We very much welcome the supportive comments made by all noble Lords. We are grateful for the way in which all those who have participated in the debate contributed to it.
	However, I should particularly like to join those noble Lords who have praised the efforts made by my noble friends Lord Ahmed and Lord Janner in their innovative initiative, which has been so successful. It demonstrates the contribution that has been made by so many from different religions and cultures. I should also like to pay tribute to the work done by my noble friend Lord Levy and many others who have participated in this enterprise.
	The Government are making every effort to encourage comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region and are providing substantial financial and practical assistance to help promote it. We shall be doing all that we can to achieve peace in the course of next year.

House adjourned at twenty minutes before ten o'clock.